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Bible Inspiration: 

Orthodox Point of View. 



Four Lectures delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, 
under the auspices of the Evangelical Alliance. 



BY 

Professor L. T. Townsend, D.D. 



Price 10 cents per Copy or $7.50 per Hundred. 

Address: Rev. DUNCAN A. MacPHIE, 
515 TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON. 



BIBLE INSPIRATION; 

Orthodox Point of View. 



Four Lectures delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, under 
the auspices of the Evangelical Alliance 



Professor L. T. Townsend, D. D. 



Price, 10c. Per Copy ; $7.50 Per Hundred. 



BOSTON, MASS. 

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

1909 



Tt/1 



\ Two ■:-- ■ 

1 1903 

CLASS ct HXc *o. 



flbts. Elbrtfcge Torres, 

wbo from a palace of pain bag 
spoken mans woros inspiring 
ano belpful to tbe autbor, 
tbese pages are oeotcateo. 



FIRST LECTURE 



November 30, 1908 



Inspiration by Superintendence 



FIRST LECTURE 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 



THERE is conclusive evidence that the Bible is a 
man-made book; a proposition that no one doubts. 

There is evidence equally conclusive that the Bible is 
a God-made book; a proposition maintained by those who 
hold the orthodox creed. 

If these two propositions are granted it follows that the 
Bible is both man-made and God-made. 

Under the guidance of this concluding statement, there 
are several topics relating to the Bible that will be relieved 
of a measure of difficulty and embarrassment — such as 
the Origin and History of the Bible, its Authenticity, its 
Credibility, its Genuineness and Inspiration. 

A discussion of either of these topics, if at all thorough, 
brings one face to face with what appears to be natural and 
supernatural agencies, working together, the possibility 
of which no theist will question, and is clearly set forth in the 
words of the Apostle: " Work out your own salvation with 
fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you." 

It is as if God had said to Moses, to Ezra, to the Apostle 
John and the others: Write and compile a book, and 
while doing it I will work with you and in you. 

Limiting the discussion in these addresses to the inspira- 
tion of the Bible, though incidentally its authenticity, credi- 
bility and genuineness will be more or less touched upon, 

7 



8 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

attention is first called to the fact that in former times the 
phrase, inspiration of the Bible, implied that its writers, 
while inspired, were so far taken possession of by the Holy 
Spirit that they would not communicate, nor select for 
communication anything different from what God desired; 
and this essentially is the view still held by " conservative " 
theologians. 

But there are not a few so-called " liberal scholars " 
who in recent times look upon inspiration as something 
quite different, and who claim that in the composition of 
the Bible there is nothing supernatural, if indeed anything 
unusual ; all intelligent men have in a degree what the 
prophets and apostles had, is the modern theory. 

M. Mangasarian states the radical theory thus: 

"The thought, word or deed that will not die is inspired. Whatever 
challenges the possibilities of man and clothes him with power to think, 
to will and do, is inspired. Whatever gives sweep to our affections and 
scope to our energies ; whatever develops to their utmost the great ideas 
that throb in the forehead, and the great loves that are felt in the breast, 
is inspired." 

Other writers of this same way of thinking speak in 
high terms of the inspiration of David, Isaiah and Jeremiah, 
but in the next breath contend no less for the inspiration 
of Homer, Dante, Milton and Shakespeare. 

A well-known Unitarian author employs these words: 
" Orthodoxy is right in maintaining the supreme excellence 
and value of the Christian Scriptures; it is right in saying 
they were written by inspired men." 

This same writer, however, does not hesitate to claim 
for the best of his own productions an inspiration similar 
to that of Moses and Isaiah, Matthew and John. Indeed 
he goes so far as to say that, " All men have their hourjs 
or moments of inspiration. . . . The poet and artist, the 
scholar and thinker have theirs; the man who invents a 
machine often has the idea come to him by an inspiration. 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 9 

Not only was the great Shakespeare inspired, but so was 
Newton, so was Columbus, so was Lord Bacon, so was 
Faust when he discovered printing, Watt when he invented 
the steam engine and Daguerre when he found out how to 
make photographic pictures; in all great discoveries and 
inventions, and in small ones too, the original idea is an 
inspiration." 

Now, if this view of Dr. James Freeman Clarke is cor- 
rect, does it not follow that the inventor of the sulphur 
match, a very useful article, and the inventor of the hair- 
pin, used in the household for a great variety of purposes, 
and the inventor of the wooden toothpick, were inspired 
essentially the same as was David when writing his psalms, 
Isaiah when writing his prophecies and John when writing 
the Apocalypse ? 

While it is true that all men in the act of thinking, 
speaking, living and breathing are dependent upon God, 
in fact upon his inspiration, for he is immanent in all things 
and all acts, yet it is equally clear that those who look upon 
inspiration from this liberal and unorthodox point of view, 
do not mean by the word what the Apostles meant. Theo- 
pneustia, on their lips meant something more than ordinary 
rhetorical composition and something more than ingenuity 
in the invention of articles useful to humanity. 

Since there are these different views of inspiration, 
and since lexicographers are accustomed to give the word 
both a specific and general meaning, we may at the out- 
set define the term as used in this discussion. 

In a word it is employed in the primitive, orthodox sense, 
and means that the Bible writers were moved upon, or 
borne along by the Holy Spirit to communicate certain 
truths, the same precisely, no more, no less, no other than 
God desired, or intended. 

The conclusion, therefore, follows that except for the 



10 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

direct, special and supernatural interposition of the Holy 
Spirit the Bible never would have been written, and 
religious truths of the profoundest interest to the human 
race would have remained to this day, clouded with un- 
certainty as they always have been where the Bible is 
unknown. 

This also should be said that according to the orthodox 
theory God does not do for man what man can, or ought to 
do for himself and, therefore miraculous or supernatural 
agencies and revelations in case of the Bible writers were 
employed only when, and to such extent as were required for 
the accomplishment of the divine purpose. 

It may be assumed also that inspiration is of different 
kinds which are sufficiently distinct from one another to allow 
of at least a general classification. 

The classification adopted in this discussion is the fol- 
lowing: 

First, Inspiration by Superintendence; second, Inspi- 
ration by Intellectual Stimulation; third, Inspiration in 
the use of Words, or Verbal Inspiration and fourth, Predic- 
tive and Visual Inspiration. 

It may be difficult in specific instances to determine 
which kind of inspiration was employed by the Holy Spirit, 
and while two or even more kinds may have been used at the 
same time, still the foregoing classification will answer 
the purposes we have in view. 

Inspiration by Superintendence is first to claim attention. 

These words Inspiration by Superintendence are not 
in every respect satisfactory, still they convey fairly well the 
thought in mind, which is, that the Holy Spirit enabled 
those who wrote the Bible to select their materials with 
great and apparently with supernatural wisdom. 

The term Superintendence implies that the Bible writers 
were left measurably free while doing their work; they 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE II 

could use a diction, idiom and rhetorical style distinctively 
their own. 

And as a matter of fact no two Bible writers employed 
the same style; and the same writer, as in case of Isaiah 
and John very noticeably changed his style and diction as 
the years went by. Between the ages of twenty and eighty 
the literary style and diction of any writer undergo 
changes more or less noticeable. The Gospel of John and 
the Epistles of John illustrate this difference, as also do the 
earlier and later prophecies of Isaiah. 

And too, the kind of subject-matter dealt with not 
only allows but calls for a change of style. The style of 
Moses is quite different when writing history in the book 
of Genesis and when dictating laws to the Hebrews in the 
book of Leviticus. The overlooking of this fact has led 
our critics to announce several very absurd conclusions as 
to the authorship of some of the books of the Bible. 

The Bible writers were also free to avail themselves 
of information already within their reach, provided such 
information answered the purpose God intended. 

When, for instance, the Pentateuch was written there 
were in existence many written parchments and tablets, 
also unwritten traditions, covering more or less fully 
Israelitish history and the early history of mankind. 

Let it therefore be supposed for a moment that without 
special revelations, or visions of any kind, the writer of the 
Pentateuch was in possession of documents and authentic 
traditions concerning everything recorded in those five 
books, orthodoxy could with the best of reasons insist that 
the Holy Spirit would need to take the direction, or control 
of the mind of the writer or compiler to such extent at 
least that he would avoid the use of statements, myths, 
traditions, or what not, that were pernicious or untrue, and 
would select out of everything in hand, only the fittest 



12 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

materials, supply deficiencies and write Bible history with 
such rhetorical skill as he possessed, or with such as might 
be inspired. That is, the writer would do everything in 
his power, the Holy Spirit the rest, if anything else were 
needed. 

As everyone knows Chaldea and Egypt had histories 
and cosmogonies, some having merit but many that were 
crude and false. 

It is a fact almost too well known to justify repetition 
that the philosophers of the countries bordering on Hebrew 
territory taught for instance that the heavens and earth 
originated from a kind of pulp and that men sprang from 
the slime of the river Nile; that the earth was hatched from 
a winged egg; that it came from a " fortuitous concourse of 
atoms," and so on. 

Now the question not yet fairly answered by the critic 
is this: How did it happen that the Pentateuch and other 
Old Testament books, though freely referring to the creation 
and origin of things escaped these and other erroneous 
speculations ? Professor Dana, distinguished in Geologi- 
cal science, quotes approvingly these words from Mr. 
Gladstone: 

" 'The first chapter of Genesis was not written to teach science, but 
not a single fact of science can be found to discredit it. This cannot be 
said of any of the other religious books of the East, — in this respect they 
are but a tangle of error and folly.' " 

Is there not here therefore, an illustration of what is 
meant by inspiration through superintendence and is there 
not very strong evidence of it ? 

So, too, during the brilliant periods of Chaldean and 
Egyptian civilization, laws of state and laws of health were 
more or less carefully studied and formulated. With those 
laws Moses unquestionably was familiar. So far, there- 
fore, as those laws were in harmony with the divine will 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 13 

there would be no need of special revelations in the forma- 
tion of similar codes for the Pentateuch. 

And it may be well to note that the position recently 
taken by Dr. W. Woods Smyth, fellow of the Medical 
Society of London, in a book entitled, Divine Dual Govern- 
ment, that the Pentateuch is not primarily a book of religion, 
but " a book of law, history and philosophy, with a correl- 
ated religion, " has strong support and will prove very 
damaging to several speculations of the evolutionist and 
higher critic. 

Now again, to save discussion, let it be assumed that 
the writer and compiler of the Pentateuch, whom we have 
every reason to suppose was Moses, assisted perhaps by 
others who were called for that purpose, copied with some 
degree of freedom into that treatise some of the laws 
found in the codes of the Chaldeans; would that neces- 
sarily invalidate the orthodox theory of inspiration, pro- 
vided the laws, history, philosophy and religion thus 
copied, or repeated, were such as to answer the divine pur- 
pose ? 

It may, however, be well to bear in mind while saying 
this, that the Chaldeans and Egyptians were themselves 
famous borrowers and copyists, and doubtless received 
the best in their codes from their predecessors, who in turn 
received in writing or through tradition what had been 
divinely revealed to men like Enoch, who had walked with 
God, and to Noah of whom, it is said, " He was a just man, 
and perfect in his generation. " 

While, therefore, it seems consistent with the divine 
method and with what is found in the Bible that Moses and 
other inspired men should make use of existing laws, rites 
and ceremonies, with which they were familiar, yet living 
in the midst of all sorts of existing laws and rules, good, bad 
and indifferent, would it not be a wise if not a necessary 



14 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

provision for the writers of the Bible, as orthodoxy asserts, 
to be supernaturally guided while making a choice between 
the true and the false, the beneficial and harmful ? And is 
not the evidence next to overwhelming that this very assist- 
ance was given during the writing of the Old Testament? 

For instance, the Old Testament often speaks of sick- 
ness and infirmities and has a multitude of sanitary regu- 
lations, but is found to be entirely free from the deceptions 
and gross errors in anatomy, physiology and pathology that 
abound in all other ancient, health, or medical literature. 
Why is this ? No rational explanation, we are free to say, 
has been offered as yet by the critic or skeptic and these 
two words have now come to mean about the same thing. 
A similar question may be asked respecting the theology 
of the early books of the Bible. 

Theology has engaged the thoughts of men ever since 
the dawn of human intelligence. All the great national- 
ities of antiquity had their theologies. The writer of the 
Pentateuch, so far as one can judge was familiar with such 
as were prevalent in his time. Indeed, it is claimed by 
the critics, and with great unanimity " that Hebrew religion 
was conjured up in the solitude of a Chaldean and Arabian 
desert;" that "the Old Testament was largely a copy, at 
least its earlier books, of Assyrian and Babylonian myths 
and traditions," and that "the Assyrians imparted their 
religion to all the nations they conquered and therefore 
must have done so to the people of Israel." 

It may, however, be said in reply to these assertions of 
our critics that they are not true at all, as will be shown 
further on; still, to save at this point any controversy, let 
it be admitted that the writer of the Pentateuch was 
familiar with the civic, hygienic and other laws of the 
Egyptians and with their ethical and religious codes and that 
he introduced some of them into his writings, still is not 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 15 

the amazing thing about it, this, that the writer of the 
Pentateuch and other Old Testament writers whom our 
critics rank far below the Chaldeans and Egyptians in 
knowledge and intelligence, were prevented from copying 
the errors of the Chaldean and Egyptian codes ? Is there 
not here a psychological wonder almost greater than any 
other, unless the supernatural factor is introduced ? 

Or, to state the matter in another form: — By as much 
as it can be shown that the writers of the earlier books of 
the Bible were familiar with the existing codes, and the 
more certainly it can be shown that they copied some things 
from those codes (very little however) the more incontestable 
is the proof that they were supernaturally aided in the 
selection of the subject matter found in the Old Testament, 
a body of literature that for its correctness and up-to-date- 
ness is more and more challenging the attention and admi- 
ration of a world of scholars and thinkers. 

Evidence of inspiration by superintendence is found 
also in the so-called psalms of David and in the proverbs of 
Solomon. There were among the Hebrews in the time of 
Ezra, as the critics claim and as every student of history 
knows, many religious psalms. The patriarchs, the pro- 
phets, the sons of Korah, Asaph, Heman, Ethan, David, and 
others were religious psalm writers. Solomon composed 
more than a thousand, and there is no reasonable doubt 
that godly men outside the Hebrew commonwealth, in 
hours of devotion had hymned in psalms their desires, 
meditations and praises to Jehovah. 

And, too, when the Book of Proverbs was compiled, 
there were maxims and proverbs perhaps almost without 
number that had been handed on, as they now are, from 
one generation to another. Solomon formulated three 
thousand and probably in his time there were in vogue 
among the Hebrews and the peoples bordering on Judea 



BIBLE INSPIRATION 



scores that wise men who lived before Solomon, before 
Abraham, and even before Noah had coined and used 

Now, if the divine purpose was to give to the world, in 
the time of Ezra, a manual of daily devotion, such as the 
book of Psalms, and a manual of practical rules for daily 
living, such as the Book of Proverbs, while there might be 
no need of a re-statement of the devout psalms and wise 
proverbs that already were well known and that fully an- 
swered the purposes of such compositions, yet on the other 
hand, as orthodoxy insists, there would be need of some 
wise, if not divine superintendence ,n order that the Book 
of Psalms might not contain songs that taught false views 
of God and man, and that the Book of Proverbs might be 
free from pernicious maxims then in use, and that a selection 
might be made in harmony with the divine purpose. That 
there was such superintendence no unprejudiced and 
scholarly reader of the Old Testament psalms and proverbs 
can well call in question, especially when one remembers 
that David, the greatest of the psalm-writers was at one 
time sinful in thought and criminal in conduct and tha 
Solomon one of the most distinguished writers of proverbs 
the world has ever known, was, during the later periods of 
his life as debased as any monarch who ever disgraced a 
throne in civilized or uncivilized lands. 

The Historical books, together with the Prophetic and 
other books of the Old Testament, will show under exam- 
ination the same evidence of superintendence as has been 
found in the writings already examined. 

Since further illustration and evidence of the type of 
inspiration under consideration found .n the Old Testa- 
ment may not at this time be deemed necessary we would 
"ass immediately to the study of the New Testament bu 
for certain objections that have been urged against not 
in y inspiration by superintendence but against every 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 17 

ether kind. Among the objections urged is this, — that 
if the Old Testament writers had been divinely aided in the 
selection of their materials they would have been kept 
free from the blunders into which frequently they have fallen. 

It is incredible, say the critics, that the Holy Spirit 
would have allowed the writer of the book of Genesis to 
represent the Heavens as being a solid vault, provided there 
is any Holy Spirit and still further provided he had anything 
to do in the writing of the book of Genesis. The critic then 
calls attention to the fact that the early Jewish lexicogra- 
phers, the early Spanish translators, the French Hebrew 
scholars, who flourished at the revival of letters and the 
early German scholars who lived between the years 1624 
and 18 10, all took it for granted that the writer of the book 
of Genesis meant to say that the sky is a solid and firm 
vault. A skeptical American writer while discussing the 
subject of Myths puts these words into the mouth of Moses: 
" And said the Gods, * Let there be a hammered, metallic 
plate in the midst of the waters.' ' Here is scientific inac- 
curacy, say the critics, that could not have occurred if 
Moses had been under divine superintendence. 

But it is well, not to be in too great haste; for this 
allegation that the writer of the Book of Genesis thus 
blundered would if true be exceedingly damaging to the 
orthodox belief and should not, therefore, be passed in 
silence or with indifference. 

In looking at this supposed blunder critically it will be 
found to be quite a " mare's nest "; for the Hebrew word 
employed by the writer of the Book of Genesis is Rakiah, 
which incorrectly was translated into the Greek by the 
word Stereoma, and into Latin by the word Firmamentum, 
and so the King James translators employed the English 
derivative, Firmament, which the critic says, and correctly, 
means something solid. 



g BIBLE INSPIRATION 

But the trouble with the critic is, that he does not go 
back far enough. The word rakiah does not mean firma- 
ment at all or anything like it. Moses could have used a 
woTd that primarily and invariably means somethmg ^ ol d 
A firm like a hammered metallic plate —I at had , or 
rilfor Stance. But the word he did use priman y 
Leans the spreading out of space, properly translated by 
The Latin Jpansus,^ which the Enghsh word expanse 

18 d And ed therefore, it appears, that either Moses was wiser 
than the early Jewish lexicographers, wiser than the early 
Spanish translators, and the French Hebrew scholars, and 
the eariY German Hebrew scholars, and was more accu a te 
t the L of word, than were the Enghsh Heb^^rs 

from using the word taraz instead of rahah, a mistake 
haT would" have occasioned orthodoxy an immense deal 
of oeTplexity. So it turns out that the critic himself in 
2 intnTe has blundered, and not the writer of the Book 

° f hotter blunder, often repeated , says the^dc that 
would not have found its way into the Old 1 stan ent . 
there had been any such provision .against blun s as 
inspiration by superintendence implies, is the 
representation that God has eyes, hands and fee. 

The critic sometimes goes so far as to say tna t tne 
Cod of the Bible is simply an overgrown Jew, wuh a 
^ beard on his face, "who lives in the ne* room and 
who is subject to all the grosser passions to which men 

are Of P cour d se there could have been no inspiration say the 
critks in case of men who held and taught such views of 
the infinite and invisible God. 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE ig 

Now, while this last statement as to the overgrown Jew 
is a vicious misrepresentation, yet that God is repeatedly 
spoken of in the Old Testament as having eyes, arms, 
hands and feet there can be no question. 

Over and over again and from first to last are found 
such representations. 

And so the critic' appears to have made a point against 
inspiration by superintendence, and really against the 
credibility of the Bible. 

The usual reply of orthodoxy is, that these words — 
eyes, hands, feet, fingers, breath, and voice of God, are 
employed on account of the imperfections or rather the 
limitations of human speech and that all things considered, 
even infinite wisdom could not have improved upon these 
representations, and that it would have been pedantic, 
if not ridiculous, had the Bible writers employed language 
suitable for the lecture room, or for a modern scientific 
treatise. 

And is not that reply in every way rational ? The Bible 
was not written for the scientific lecture room alone, but 
for the humble cottage as well; not for scholars alone, 
but for the toiling and suffering millions of the human race, 
of every land and of all times, and for people who have 
neither the leisure nor opportunity for mastering the 
nomenclature of the university, and for such people, or- 
thodoxy asserts that the language of the Bible cannot be 
improved. But to this reply should be added another, that 
the very representations to which critics object are employed 
by the most intelligent and scholarly people the world over. 

Professor Tyndall constantly urged upon his scientific 
co-workers the importance of " visualizing the invisible" 
(to employ his own words), for "in this way only," he says, 
" can we conceive of the invisible existing and acting upon 
the visible." 



BIBLE INSPIRATION 

Professor Tyndall means that when speaking of the 
JS£ God, of the invisible world or c J ™ e 
thines of any kind, even the scientist, if he would best serve 
Si, must employ terms and words descriptive of 
visible objects, and words also in common use. 

And Renan, the brilliant French writer and skeptic 
speaks of the fatherly smile that shines across the face of 
nature. And Kipling sings:— 

"Jehovah of the thundere, _ 
Lord, God of battles, aid. 
Robert Ingersoll, who was accustomed to pile his 
Jctives and S sarcasms many deep upon t^- 
the Bible, employed phrases like this- Arrows 

nt: sra =-* ** «* t^ e k 

into the language of these -n absolute literahsm? 

to be supposed that Renan beheved that God has a- ven 

heaven with his bow and arrow? „ 

And when David sang his triumphal psalm. Lit 
up your heads, O ye gates; even lift thn up ye eas- 
ing doors; and the King of glory shall come n s one to 
suppose that he intended to teach his readers that the Lord 
of Hosts, the King of Glory, having a b»«»^™£ ££ 
in royal robes, with a crown on his head and sceptre 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 21 

He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his 
feet; Thou, O Lord shalt laugh at them; thou shalt have all the heathen 
in derision ; The Lord hath opened his armory and hath brought forth the 
weapons of his indignation." 

Is one to suppose that those Bible writers believed and 
intended to teach that the Lord has physical eyes, eyes that 
have legs and feet and that those legs are on a run through 
the earth; or that his tongue is a literal flame of fire; or that 
he is laughing at the confusion of the heathen, as one man 
laughs at another who trips and falls on the street ? Or 
did those Bible writers for one moment have the gross 
conception that the God they worshipped is " a big Jew, 
living in the next room ? " The supposition is almost 
idiotic. 

Those Bible writers believed and taught that God is 
infinite in power and majesty; that he is invisible, without 
body or parts, whose dwelling is immensity. When, 
therefore, the terms eye, arm, hand, finger and foot were 
used by the Bible writers, it was in the same sense they are 
now used by scientists and poets, and for the same reason, 
— because human language has no better terms with 
which to express the ideas they wished to convey; and 
when one has faith in the infinite, personal and ever-present, 
but always invisible God, not only is one not disturbed in 
one's belief in inspiration by the terms eye, arm, hand 
or fingers of God, but is helped and encouraged. These 
familiar words bring God nearer to the heart of humanity 
and make him more real. Those Bible writers " visualized 
the invisible," the only thing, as Professor Tyndall would 
say, that can be done to make invisible things intelligible 
and real, and devout souls in the twentieth century, whether 
teaching in the university, or working in a coal pit, offer 
thanks, that God's eye is watching over them; that his 
hand is leading and his arm is upholding them. 

But the critic has made, as he thinks, a far more telling 



BIBLE. INSPIRATION 

point against the orthodox theory of inspiration; it is 

stated thus: f scienti fic errors which 

Bible writers fell into al sor ^ Spint 

w0U ld not have ^ J^ $ h adon of super intendence. 
afforded them you. so-cal e Un p and ^ that 

They believed «d taught that he ^ ^^ ^ 

thU , nder f iS t rilThen- blS and teachings are unscientific 

and, in fact, all then Den instructor on natural 

phenomena. He sa>s t ^ m(jves . that 

but is stationary and that the ^.^ due w 

thunder is not the voice o. Go at aU, ^.^ 

th e sudden f turba "« ^i the thunder clap is not 

and that the long pea which tollo io „ of tne 

the murmur of God s vote ^ but the ^ ^ 
elec-al explosion J*. jomttam ^ ^ 

mountains and clouds, tna caused by 

the Bible writers supposed an ta ugh ^ ^ ^ ^ 

differences of temperature d f^J ^ ^ 

adjustment of these diffe rent tempera a ^^^ 

m ints in the ait that ^J*.^ as natural conditions 

or cyclone, not as Go -.) f J> and kept in 

determine; that the s tars a re no volved from 

their places by the fingers ^ God b .^ 

fire-mist and ate orbited by the attrac B ^^ 

In ^ *"" rSJ^toTS only ignorant men 
were ignorant and em P lo >f g . ; did not correct their 
would employ, and the tloiy V w have been 

ignorance and blunders which certainly 
done bad those writers been inspire^ ^ ^ 

But before making an uncond.tm ^ ^ 

taking a back seat, one may have ., ew 
commanding generals of the kept rf much 

The interrogation point is otten 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 23 

service when used against those who think they know it all, 
and so it may be asked whether upon going into the largest 
and best equipped observatories in this, or any other country, 
our critics would expect to hear anything but sunrise and 
sunset, provided the astronomers were referring to these 
phenomena ? 

When the great Herschel left orders for his servant to 
call him to observe the passage of some star, would you 
expect him to say, 

" My boy, when in the revolution of the earth on its 
imaginary axis, the illuminated ray of the sun shall fall 
upon the earth's surface at a longitude and latitude reck- 
oned from the observatory at Greenwich, near London, 
in England, then call me ? " 

Had Herschel spoken in any such way, John, with 
reverence, would have been likely to say to himself, Alas! 
I believe my master has gone crazy." 

There was no danger, however, for Herschel as long as 
he studied astronomy, was wont to say, " John, you may 
wind the clocks at sunrise;" and if he had slept during the 
day, as he sometimes did, that he might work in the night, 
he would have said, " Call me at sunset or midnight." 

Must not the critic and skeptic be tremendously hard 
pushed for materials when they resort to such featherweight 
objections to Bible revelation and inspiration ? 

But before leaving this point it may be said that there is 
something more in the phraseology employed by the Bible 
writers than poetic license, and more than the critics appear 
to imagine. 

The words electricity, gravitation and heat cannot be 
used any longer as they once were. 

What is electricity ? What is gravitation ? What is heat ? 
The scientist when now asking these questions finds him- 
self face to face against a stone wall — or God. 



24 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

The only reply he is able to make is, that electricity, 
gravitation, heat and the other forms of force or energy — 
chemical, electrical, mechanical and all the rest are mani- 
festations of one invisible Power that is universal, apparently 
without beginning, without end, omnipotent, omnipresent, 
and that acts with wonderful intelligence. What, there- 
fore, is this invisible Power that is universal, and yet a 
unity; this Power that is eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, 
intelligent ; this Power that thunders in the sky, that is the 
source of wind and of every other motion ; this Power that 
sways the tides, hurls planets and stars through space and 
keeps them in their orbits — What is it ? 

After meditating on these problems for a long while 
Thomas Carlyle once exclaimed, " It is Almighty God." 
One will wait a long time for a better reply from the 
critic. 

F-O-R-C-E spells God, the Eternal and Almighty Some- 
thing; that is the latest and substantially the unanimous 
vote of the scientific world. 

The conclusion reached then, is this — that on the plane 
of the highest criticism, in the realms of the physical sciences, 
as well as in those of letters, poetry and theology, the Bible 
writers, when using these words that are criticized, spoke 
with absolute scientific accuracy, though with a wealth and 
depth of meaning that doubtless was much beyond their 
thought. 

The thunder is God's voice; the wind is God's breath; 
the tides and waves are swayed by his arm; the heavens 
are the work of his fingers; not a sparrow falls without the 
notice of his eye, and the hair of the head is numbered under 
his most accurate and beneficent observation. 

Though the words " order of nature," " laws of nature," 
" processes of nature," and " principles of nature," are 
frequently spoken, yet in the last analysis it is God, the 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 25 

Infinite Force, that is back of it all, and does it all, by 
methods that he alone has ordained. 

The Bible conception of God's relation to every kind of 
phenomena is now conceded by all theists to be wholly 
right. The start and growth of a blade of grass ; the 
creation of the smallest insect that balances and basks in 
the sun and dies an hour later, call no less for the imme- 
diate presence of God than does the fashioning and flying 
of a planet in the sky. 

So that the representations and phrasing of the Bible, 
that have been ridiculed over and over again are not blun- 
ders that the Holy Spirit forgot to amend, but are the most 
rational possible, and instead of being antagonistic to the 
theory of inspiration, loom up in its defence. 

If time permitted it would be interesting to go through 
the entire rigmarole of the critics' contentions against the 
supernatural revelation and inspiration of the Old Testa- 
ment, but as such an attempt would crowd out other and 
more important matters, and as what has been said is 
sufficient to illustrate the readiness with which the current 
and constantly repeated objections to Bible inspiration can 
be met, we resume the discussion of the direct evidence 
of inspiration by superintendence. 

Evidence from the Old Testament having been pre- 
sented with a fulness sufficient for the general purpose 
in view, we may consider next and with considerable brevity, 
the evidence that those who wrote and compiled the New 
Testament were also inspired to select wisely from the large 
amount of materials at command. 

The records concerning the life of Jesus first claim 
attention. The writers are said to have journeyed with 
their Master through the towns and villages of Judea and 
among the hills of Galilee ; they witnessed his deeds of 
mercy and heard his words spoken in public and private. 



26 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

Now, while a new revelation of what had been seen and 
heard by them was unnecessary, while peculiarities of indi- 
vidual diction, idiom and rhetorical style need not be in- 
terfered with when describing what they had seen and heard, 
yet orthodoxy wisely contends that in other respects divine 
superintendence would be well nigh indispensable. 

The apostle John suggests the difficulty when saying 
that he supposed the world could hardly contain the books 
if everything Jesus did and said were written. John did 
not mean this as a literal statement, but as a figure of speech 
known as hyperbole, very common in the Orient and often 
used in the Occident to express with emphasis the thought 
intended. While this rhetorical figure expresses more than 
the actual fact, it does not more than express the importance 
of the fact. 

John simply meant that if all Jesus did and said were 
recorded in books, the number would be immense, which 
certainly, from John's point of view, would have been the 
case. These words of John were used in the same sense 
as when one now says, " Everybody was there," meaning 
only that there was a very large number. 

From this great amount of material concerning the life 
of Jesus, it would have been no easy task even for men of 
literary training and who had plenty of leisure to make 
a wise selection of what could best be woven into the 
brief and remarkable New Testament narratives of the 
life of Jesus. 

But how much more difficult for those fishermen of 
Galilee to do this ? What temptations there must have 
been for those men to enlarge, expatiate and speculate upon 
the birth, early life, miracles and teachings of their Master! 

What a striking difference in this respect there is be- 
tween the writings of the New Testament and the 
apocryphal writings ? 



INSPIRATION BY SUPERINTENDENCE 2J 

As a matter of fact the gospels are no less marvellous for 
what they omit than for what they say. 

Here in the records by the four evangelists is found the 
most interesting and thrilling account of the grandest and 
most dramatic life this world ever has known, three years 
of which were crowded with almost unexampled activities. 
And yet the narrative is written with such remarkable and 
hoice selection of materials and also with such ease and 
brevity that without weariness, though it contains a whole 
system of theology, one can read it at a single sitting. Is 
there not here, therefore, ample illustration of what has 
been called inspiration by superintendence and likewise 
proof of it sufficient to satisfy any unprejudiced mind ? 

Did our time limitations permit and did the object 
intended in these addresses call for additional evidence of 
the point before us it easily could be gathered from the 
Acts of the Apostles, from the Epistles and from the Apoc- 
alypse. 

We venture, therefore, to close the argument at this 
point feeling quite sure that additional evidence will not be 
called for except by someone whom any amount of evidence 
would fail to satisfy. 

The point reached would, therefore, seem to justify the 
conclusion that the Bible is God-made and made by in- 
spired men to this extent that everything was excluded from 
it, except what God intended should be recorded, and 
orthodoxy does not hesitate to say that this conclusion will 
be more and more firmly established as the years go by, and 
will be acknowledged among men long after the din of 
modern adverse criticism has ceased to be heard. 



SECOND LECTURE 

December 21, 1908 

Inspiration by Mental Stimulation 



SECOND LECTURE 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 



YOUR attention is invited in this address to evidence in 
support of the second kind of inspiration, that by 
which the intellectual faculties of the Bible writers were 
strengthened, quickened or stimulated so that they were 
enabled to write and compile a book that contains, accord- 
ing to orthodoxy, the most valuable information in the 
world's literature — information that never could have^been 
written by the Jews unless aided supernaturally. 

The discussion has to do first with the Old Testament 
Scriptures. 

Reference already has been made to the freedom of 
the Bible record from the errors of the Egyptian and Babylo- 
nian cosmogonies. 

But there is also evidence that there was something 
more than mere protection against error in the Old Testa- 
ment record of the beginning of things. 

There need be no hesitation in saying that no thor- 
oughly informed person can read the account of creation 
in the opening chapters of Genesis without the conviction 
that the writer must have been under the spell of a helpful 
inspiration, if that phraseology may be allowed. 

Prof. Richard Dana and Chancellor Dawson, repre- 
sentatives of a school of orthodox scientists not yet extinct, 
may be quoted in support of the statement just made. 

3 1 



32 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

" The first thought that strikes the scientific reader, says Professor 
Dana, " is the evidence of divinity, not merely in the first verse of the record 
and the successive fiats, but in the whole order of creation. There is so 
much that the most recent readings of science have for the first time ex- 
plained, that the idea of man as the author becomes utterly incomprehensible. 
By proving the record true, science pronounces it divine; for who could have 
correctly narrated the secrets of eternity but God himself." 

The words of Chancellor Dawson are these: 

" The order of creation as stated in Genesis is faultless in the light of 
modern science and many of the details show the most remarkable agreement 
with the results of science born only in our day." 

The statement is ventured that there is not a skeptical 
scientist anywhere who is able successfully to controvert this 
united testimony of Professors Dana and Dawson, which 
is also concurred in by a score of other eminent scientists. 

But to the point: How could the author of the book of 

Genesis in an age abounding in scientific absurdities, have 

written an account of creation that challenges the surprise 

and admiration of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries 

unless aided by a wisdom more than human ? Let the 

critic think it over. 

Reference also was made in the former address to the 

freedom of the Old Testament from all unsanitary and 

unscientific hygienic rules and regulations. But there is 

something more than a mere escape from error in the rules 

of health formulated by Moses. 

The sanitary and hygienic codes in the Pentateuch not 

only are immeasurably superior to those of all other ancient 

peoples but owing to their excellence, are a great surprise 

to the ablest medical minds of modern times. 

The late Dr. Edward Clarke speaks thus in his work 

on Sex in Education: 

" The instructors, the houses and schools of our country's daughters, 
would profit by reading the old Levitical law. The race has not yet out- 
grown the physiology of Moses." 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 33 

Dr. Renouard, in his History of Medicine, translated 
by Dr. Comegys, makes these statements: 

" The writings of Moses constitute a precious monument in the history 
of medicine, for they embrace hygienic rules of the highest sagacity. ... In 
reading, for instance, those precepts designed to regulate the relation of a 
man to his wife, one cannot repress a sentiment of admiration for the wisdom 
and foresight which made such salutary regulations a religious duty. . . . Apart 
from the religious ceremonies connected with them, might it not be said that 
they are extracts from a modern work on hygienics ?" 

Our country and quite a good deal of Europe have been 
off and on stirred almost into an uproar by " pure food " 
discussions. But among medical men who have given 
thought to these subjects there is no question that if the 
old Jewish sanitary laws as to the inspection of cattle prior 
to their being slaughtered for food were enforced there 
would be no longer danger of having diseased meat from 
Chicago, or Kansas City palmed off on an unsuspecting 
and innocent public in Massachusetts. 

Dr. Wood Smythe in a book recently published in Lon- 
don, A Key to Modern Mysteries, brings out the remarkable 
fact that " the sanitary code of the Hebrews furnishes an 
unerring guide in biological and medical science: ,, 

" The Mosaic code contains the most useful principles of our sanitary 
laws, and distinctly recognized the terrible microbe that is in every vessel, 
with its contents, in the houses of the dead that was uncovered became 
unclean. There follows all the procedures of notification and inspection, 
all the principles of separation and isolation, of aception in the numerous 
washings and purification by water and by fire, and of antiseption in the use 
of perfumes and odors in the tabernacle and temple, such as cinnamon and 
cassia, substances that are now found to be more effective than carbolic 
acid for diffusive disinfection." 

Is it not, therefore, more than surprising that in the 
time of Moses the microbe, unknown even in modern 
medical science, until within a dozen or so years, was per- 
fectly guarded against by the sanitary regulations of the 
Old Testament ? 






34 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

And as is very well known the practical results of follow- 
ing the rules of health laid down in the Mosaic code have 
been repeatedly and favorably commented upon. 

Dr. Gibbon, a health officer of London, in a recent 

report, makes this remarkable announcement: 

" The life of the Jew in London is, on an average, twice as long as the 
life of the Gentile." 

In the district of Whitechapel, a Medical Officer, in 
his report, states this fact: 

" On the North side of High Street, occupied by Jews the average 
death-rate is twenty-seven per thousand; while on the South side, occupied 
by English and Irish, the average death-rate is forty-three per thousand." 

Is it, therefore, an easy matter without the introduction 
of a supernatural factor to explain this code of Moses which 
when followed secures these salutary results ? 

There are those who think that John Wesley was almost 
inspired; and he was a man of rare endowments, but 
no follower of his can read his rules of health and remedies 
for sicknesses without bringing a blush to the face, and yet 
Wesley lived three thousand three hundred years after 
Moses and only one hundred seventeen years ago. 

Has the critic yet been able to offer any rational 
explanation for the superiority of the health rules of Moses- 
over those of Wesley, and over those of nearly all others, 
ancient and modern, who have written on these subjects ? 

The legal and legislative writings of the Old Testament 
are no less surprising than those that have to do with 
health and sickness. 

It has been well remarked and perhaps no really in- 
telligent person will doubt it that among all ancient litera- 
ture there is nothing that can be compared " in sim- 
plicity, directness, and universality with the Decalogue. 
Thou shalt not kill, steal, bear false witness, commit adultery 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 35 

or covet, are things concerning which the intelligence of 
the average man will not go astray if let alone. " 

Every lawyer, and statesman, if well informed, knows 
that modern national and international systems of law find 
their basis, or fundamental principles, in the legal code of 
the Old Testament. 

A skeptical lawyer, while reading the commandments 

and thinking of their accuracy and comprehensiveness, fell 

into this process of reasoning: 

" I have read history. The Egyptians and their neighbors were 
idolaters; so were the Greeks and Romans. They never gave a code like 
this of Moses which surpasses the philosophy and wisdom of the most en- 
lightened ages, and in it the learning and sagacity of all subsequent time can 
detect no flaw. Where did Moses get that law? " 

Pondering over this question led the lawyer to a belief 
in Bible inspiration. 

Is the critic, if called upon, prepared to answer that 
lawyer's question, " Where did Moses get that law ? " — 
which such distinguished masters of legal lore as Blackstone, 
Marshall, Story, Kent, and scores of others, eminent in 
the legal profession, held in the highest and even in reverent 
esteem? And with equal pertinence one may ask: Where 
did Moses get his marvellous knowledge of state-craft ? 

Statesmen, famous in political science, such as Grotius, 
Selden, Montesquieu, Raleigh, Burke, Pitt, the Adamses, 
Webster; likewise some of the ablest jurists on the British 
bench and on that of the United States, not only never 
were known to question in matters of national and inter- 
national legislature the correctness of Bible statement, but 
often passages from the Scriptures were quoted by them as 
though they were a final appeal, — a decision from the 
supreme court of the whole world. 

And so far as anything has yet been discovered, the prin- 
ciples of government recorded in the Pentateuch were some- 



36 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

thing new in the world, whose origin, as orthodoxy has 
abundant justification for saying, is not to be found in the 
mind of men alone, but in the mind of God and in that of 
man, in communion. 

When, therefore, the critic in our day asserts that the 
principles of civil government and jurisprudence found in 
the Pentateuch were borrowed from the Babylonians and 
Egyptians, he betrays a pitiful degree of ignorance. In the 
government of those countries there is scarcely a gleam of 
Mosaic legislation. 

Passing from civil legislation to the province of ethics 
and religion, though civil and religious legislation were 
closely related in the Hebrew Economy, it will be found 
that on these subjects the Old Testament is so far, in ad- 
vance of all other ancient literature that one is amazed that 
comparisons, even by the most radical and reckless critics, 
have been instituted. 

The critic, however, has done this and has persistently 
tried to undermine the position of orthodox believers by 
asserting that the ethical and religious codes of the 
Hebrews were borrowed from the Babylonians. 

Until recent investigations were made, orthodoxy 
could do little else than parry assertion by assertion, always 
an unsatisfactory method of argument. But to-day facts 
take the place of assertions. 

Follow for a moment the controversy as to the Sabbath 
question. The critic's assertion has been that the Sabbath 
of the Hebrews was not an original idea but was copied 
from the Babylonian Rest Day. 

The probability, however, is that long before Babylon 
had an existence, the necessity of a day of rest had been 
discovered, or had been revealed to Noah, or some other 
man of God. 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 37 

But whether this is so or not, the facts are that the 
Sabbath of the Hebrews was quite different from that 
of the Babylonians. The Hebrew Sabbath was a day of 
rest and rejoicing; that of the Babylonians was only recog- 
nized in court and temple as a matter of convenience. 
While examining the dates of nearly three thousand con- 
tracts and deeds, Professor Schiaparelli found that pro- 
fessional business was transacted by the Babylonians, the 
same on their so-called Sabbath as on other days. 

The Hebrew Sabbath was " free " — that is was inde- 
pendent of month or year; the Babylonian weeks and 
Sabbaths were astronomical, depending upon the lunar 
month. 

And as a matter of interest it may be noted, that while 
the Babylonian weeks and Sabbaths were adopted by no 
other nationality, the Hebrews though conquered and 
enslaved, succeeded in imposing their ethical views of the 
Sabbath, theoretically, at least, upon Greeks and Romans, 
and their method of reckoning weeks and Sabbaths upon 
the whole civilized world. 

And what is true of the Sabbath is no less true when, on 
other matters comparisons are instituted between the 
Hebrew codes and those of the Babylonians, Chaldeans, 
or Egyptians. The resemblances are found to be super- 
ficial, while the differences are essential and fundamental, 
the differences out-weighing the resemblances a hundred 
to one. 

Take, for instance, the theological teachings of the 
Hammurabic code, lately discovered in the ruins of Shu- 
shan, dating 2250 B.C., earlier therefore than the birth 
of Abraham. That^code is polytheistic from start to finish. 
The code of the Pentateuch, on the other hand, is mono- 
theistic. It teaches the existence of but one God, " whose 



38 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

character is supremely holy; whose fear is the ' beginning 
of wisdom' and who is the source of the strength, peace 
and glory of human life. ,, 

And it may also be said that the idea of God's goodness 
is most emphatically foreign to every thing Babylonian. 
Nor did any other ancient people, except the Hebrews, 
unless influenced by Old Testament teaching, ever conceive 
the idea that God is good. Among the thirty million gods 
of the Hindus there is not one who is a god of goodness. 
Nor is this an occasion of surprise, for the logic of philosophy 
and the outcomeof pure science based upon what men seeand 
experience, even in our day, as often lead one to doubt God's 
goodness as to assert it. How, therefore, did it happen 
that the Hebrews made this discovery of a good God even 
when surrounded with peoples having the exact opposite 
ideas of God's character ? The critic may also think this 
over. 

In accounting for the origin of things the Bible writers, 
unlike the makers of other creeds, had nothing to say of 
demi-gods, of chance, fate, or of monsters of any kind. 
The author of the Pentateuch was so far from teaching 
the current theologies of other peoples that he condemned 
all foreign gods, and the teaching of polytheism in any 
form was looked upon by the inspired prophets as " the 
one deadly sin." 

A writer in a recent issue of The Quarterly Review 

(London), after going over the ground with scholarly 

thoroughness writes as follows: 

" In the Babylonian cosmogonies everything is unified except the Deity. 
Gods in the plural number and of both sexes assist at every stage of the 
creation, and Marduk indeed stands forth as the chief. But this rank, it 
is clear, is but the reflection of the political prosperity and supremacy of 
his city. On these inconsiderable but evanescent factors his supremacy 
depended; when they decayed, his supremacy also vanished. The last 
state of the Babylonian religion was like the first — a number of local cults, 
each with its own deity." 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 39 

One other quotation will be allowed. It is from Pro- 
fessor H. V. Hilprecht of the University of Pennsylvania. 
Speaking of the absurd claims of critics he employs these 
words: 

" On the basis of r~y researches, covering a period of fifteen years, I 
must declare that this is an absolute impossibility. The faith of the Israelites 
could never have had its origin in the Babylonian mountain of the gods, 
which is full of death and the savor of death." 

But the critic replies, You have given here the opinion 
of one English writer and of one American professor. 
Dare you consult the German scholars ? Certainly and 
dare to assert that the best qualified German Assyriologists 
and Egyptologists almost to a man are opposed to those 
who have been trying to trace the origin of the Pentateuch 
to Babylonian and Egyptian sources. 

Says the eminent Dr. Koberle of Erlangen: 

" Babel may be of interest to us on account of the Bible, but the signi- 
ficance of the Bible does not lie in what comes from Babel, but in that which 
is independent of Babel, that which goes far beyond Babel, and which is 
directed against Babel." 

The criticism of Professor C. von Orelli, the distin- 
guished Old Testament exegete at Basle is put in these 
words: 

" The Delitzsch theory, that Israel's civilization^'and religion were 
of Babylonian origin, really has in it nothing new, or original, and is destitute 
of sound reasoning and common sense." 

In a late university address, Professor H. H. Kuyper, 
of the Free University of Amsterdam, entitled, " Develop- 
ment or Revelation?" makes this declaration: 

" The recent archaeological finds in Oriental lands undermine the whole 
speculative and philological reconstruction of the Old Testament religion 
that is advocated by the critics." 

Other Germans, who, in oneway or another are contro- 
verting the views of those who disparage the originality 
of the Pentateuch, are Professor Edward Konigh, who in 



40 BIBLE INSPIRATION 



a late article in The Journal of Theology entitled, "/The 
Latest Phase of the Controversy over Babylon and the 
Bible," leaves scarcely standing room for the critic. 

Professor John Kunze of Liepsic, who has just pub- 
lished one of the ablest defences of the conservative view 
that has appeared in late years and Professor Holtzmann 
of Berlin, who has discovered, he says, that " while radical 
criticism of the Bible is taking root in America, it already 
has run its round in Germany," are on the orthodox side 
of the controversy. 

Others who are opposing the claims of the critics are 
Professor Barth of Berne, Dr. H. Badinch of Amsterdam, 
said to be " the ablest living orthodox theologian in any 
country," Professor Camerlynag, of the Catholic Univer- 
sity of Louvain, Dr. Dornstetter, another distinguished 
Catholic theologian, Professor Von G. Hoberg of Frei- 
burg, Dr. Hoffman of Berlin, Professor Fritz Hommel of 
Munich (one of the foremost Assyriologists in Europe) 
Dr. Alfred Jeremias of Leipsic, Professor Kautsch of Halle, 
Professor Kittel of Leipsig, Dr. Klostermann of Kiel, and Dr. 
Rutgers, one of the most celebrated among German speak- 
ing historians and apologetic writers in Europe. 

It is interesting to note also that the German destructive 
critics are fighting among themselves. 

Professor Harnach almost fiercely assails the conclu- 
sions reached by Wellhausen. Wellhausen denies the 
Mosaic origin of the Decalogue. Kuenen claims that 
Moses was the author. Wellhausen admits that the 
Exodus was an historical event, Stade says the thing was 
impossible; Wellhausen gives one date for the Pentateuch 
Professor Dillman another, and others dispute them both, 
and so on. 

It is hoped that the purpose in presenting this array of 
German names will not be misunderstood; it is simply to 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 4 1 

meet the challenge offered and to show that our belated 
American critics, some of whom are editors of religious 
publications and professors in universities and theological 
schools do not appear to know what is going on in the 
world, though everlastingly chattering about " the trend 
of scholarship," and " drift of modern opinion." 

And what has been said may also be helpful to orthodox 
laymen who have been told that in that land of profound 
scholarship, Germany, are forging weapons that are to 
demolish utterly the whole structure of supernaturalism. 
We may rest assured, however, that nothing of the kind 
will happen. 

And now the closing word, as we turn from these attempts 
to pilfer the honor of originating the Old Testament concep- 
tions of law, ethics, and religion from the Hebrews and give it 
to the Babylonians, is this, — that these critics are either 
ignorant, or malicious and on these questions are entitled no 
longer to the consideration or respect of a thinking people. 

Your attention is invited next to a brief examination 
of the Old Testament, viewed merely as a body of litera- 
ture, without regard to its ethical or religious teachings. 

The point is this, that there are at least some parts of 
the old Testament that seemingly could not have been 
written by the Jews at any time from the Exodus to the 
destruction of their city by the Romans except by the assis- 
tance of a power foreign to themselves. 

For illustration, allow a comparison between the 
psalms of David and Gray's "Elegy, Written in a Country 
Churchyard." 

As a piece of literary art that poem is properly classed 
among the most faultless gems of the English tongue; yet 
in beauty, charm and pathos, it does not equal a score of 
the religious psalms, hymns and odes of David that were 
written with the least apparent effort. And a fact especially 



42 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

noteworthy is that the "Elegy" can not be translated into any 
foreign language without losing almost entirely its English 
charm, while the Psalms of David are priceless gems in 
every language. 

Gray was a master in classical literature and thor- 
oughly familiar with the world's poets and poetry and 
spent the best energies of his life in composing that 
Elegy. 

David on the other hand, knew little of the world's 
literature, except what he read in the earlier books of the 
Bible. The watching of flocks in his youth, later admin- 
istering the affairs of a kingdom and engaging in warfare 
were his employments. How is it then with such odds 
against him that David easily secures the palm of poetic 
victory ? Certainly no one need be told that the Rig-vedas 
of India,' the poems of Homer, those of Dante and Milton, 
that royal triumvirate of poets, have no such multitude 
of admirers and readers from all the walks of life as have 
the Psalms of David. 

It was John Milton who found in the rhetorical and 
poetic construction of the Psalms of David, as well as in 
the thoughts expressed, something of which no one else is 
better qualified to speak. The following is what he says: 

"Not in their divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of com- 
position, they may be easily made to appear over all kinds of lyric poetry 
to be incomparable." 

Would it not seem, therefore, that David must have been 
a superior, literary and religious genius, quite unknown to 
the world before or since his day, or else have been en- 
dowed with some sort of supernatural inspiration ? 

Among the Jewish people, appeared too that wonderful 
dramatic poem, with its prose prologue and epilogue, the 
book of Job, which in grandeur of conception, richness 
of expression and religious helpfulness, far outranks the 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 43 

Iliad of Homer, the Divine Comedy of Dante, the Hamlet 

of Shakespeare, and the Faust of Goethe. 

Carlyle speaking of this book of Job, expresses the 

mind of every really critical student.: 

" It is one of the grandest things ever written by man; a noble book. 
Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime 
reconciliations ; soft and great as the summer midnight; as the world with 
its seas and stars, — there is nothing written, I think, of equal literary merit." 

Or, consider for a moment, the devotional parts of the 
Old Testament. As everyone knows those prayers offered 
by the people of God, whether in the home circle, in the 
social prayer service, or in public, that are most fitting, 
and that move human hearts most, are those adorned with 
phraseology found in the Bible. 

If one would feel a spiritual uplift mingled with sur- 
prise, one should listen to the prayers of even illiterate 
saints of God that are woven almost entirely out of Bible 
language, one of which is more to the point and more in- 
spiring than a ship load sometimes heard from the pul pit,elo- 
quent and elegant enough, though apparently addressed not 
to heaven but to the well-behaved people sitting in the pews. 

Matthew Arnold in his book, Literature and Dogma, 
introduces a comparison between the prayers of St. Augus- 
tine and those of Israel's poet, quoting the following prayer 
from that really great and religious-minded church father: 

" Come to my help, thou one God, one eternal true substance, where 
is no discrepancy, no confusion, no death: where is supreme concord, 
supreme evidence, supreme constancy, supreme plentitude, supreme life; 
where he who begets and who is begotten of him are one; above whom is 
nothing, outside of whom is nothing, without whom is nothing; beneath 
whom is the whole; hearken unto me, my God, my Lord." 

What language to put on to the lips of the great mass of 
sorrowing and struggling humanity, and what a gulf be- 
tween that prayer and scores found among those of David. 



44 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

Listen to his agonizing prayer after his terrible crime: 

"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness; ac- 
cording unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgres- 
sions. Wash me thoroughly from my sins, and blot out mine iniquities. 
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 
Cast me not away from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from 
me." 

That is a universal supplication, going straight to the 
heart of things. 

"Such," says Arnold half ironically, "is how those poor 
ill-endowed Semites, belonging to the occipital races, un- 
helped by our Aryan genius, prayed and talked religion! " 

The friends of Theodore Parker, the widely-read scholar 
and brilliant preacher, distinguished above most others of 
his way of thinking, gathered from a large number of his 
public prayers a selection of forty that were published in a 
small volume. The following taken at random is a sample 
of the rest: 

" O thou Infinite Perfection, who fillest the world with thyself, and art 
not far from anyone of us; we thank thee for the material world ... for 
the human world ... for the transcendent world! O Thou who art 
Almighty Power, All-present Spirit! who art all-knowing wisdom, and all- 
nghteous justice we thank Thee for Thyself, and for ourselves." 

That prayer might have done well enough for an admir- 
ing and self-satisfied audience in Music Hall, but how 
pitifully it fails to touch the poor, distressed, and hungry 
heart of humanity! 

It is to be said, however, to the credit of Mr. Parker 
that when closing his last public prayer he employed the 
words of that matchless gem of all that is possible in human 
adoration and supplication, beginning: — "Our Father 
who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." 

And now the question recurs: How was it possible foi 
the Old Testament writers, unaided, to produce this superior 
and surprising body of literature, embracing history, laws, 
ethics, religion, theology, poetry, didactic, epic and lyric ? 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 45 

And this question is reinforced by the fact that there 
are but two known Jewish writers, and they of late date, 
aside from those who wrote the Bible, that are worthy of 
mention, Philo and Josephus, neither of whom was poet or 
prophet; nor would any reputable scholar think of placing 
these men on the same plane with those who wrote the Old 
Testament. 

And it should also be borne in mind, that when most of 
the Old Testament was written, the Jews were in almost 
every way much behind the neighboring nations. 

Their most brilliant era was that of Solomon, and yet 
when building the temple, the King was obliged to send 
abroad for artisans to work out the plans that had been 
furnished, as David assured his son, by a supernatural 
revelation. 

The Jew was less scientific than the Egyptians, less 
artistic than the Greeks, less enterprising than the Cartha- 
genians and less literary than the Romans, and yet this exclu- 
sive, inferior, unartistic and unclassic Jewish people pro- 
duced a body of literature, book after book, and chapter 
after chapter, which contains the greatest and mightiest 
conceptions that ever have dawned upon the human mind, 
having a literary force and beauty unsurpassed in any period 
of the world's history. 

In commenting on these problems Dr. John Smith, in 
a book entitled The Integrity of the Scriptures, speaks thus: 

" Here we have, not a great people like any of those that surrounded 
them, but a nation, which of its own self could do nothing for science or 
philosophy, which could not observe and could not experiment, which 
could not compile a grammar nor invent a meter and yet they produced this 
literature, a living whole, a supreme literary creation, animated by an ethical 
spirit which has molded and still moves the world." 

And in a recent publication, Lines of Defence, Professor 
Margoliouth, speaking of the Old Testament, employs 
these words: — 



46 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

" After having once taken its place at the head of the literature of the 
world, the Old Testament has no intention of quitting that post. Egypt 
and Assyria have produced monuments which were long lost, but now are 
found and deciphered. But who reads them except out of mere curiosity, 
or to aid him in some other study ? Indian literature is now as easy of access 
as Greek. But who cares for it? " 

And he might have added, What is there in it to men 
in the common walks of life that is worth the time it would 
take to read the best of it ? 

But the critic may suggest that these advocates in their 
special pleadings for the superiority of the Old Testament 
appear to overlook such noteworthy writings as those of 
Plato, four hundred years before the Christian era and those 
of Aristotle, a hundred years later. Oh, no, they have not 
been overlooked. But after studying them as carefully and 
favorably as one may, the surprising fact remains that when 
the best that can be culled from their writings and from 
all other so-called pagan classics is placed alongside of 
the Old Testament Scriptures the differences are so striking 
that to a thoughtful person they are startling, and the more 
profoundly they are studied, the more striking and startling 
they appear. 

When, therefore, orthodoxy demands a rational explan- 
ation for this transcendence of Old Testament literature 
and the critic merely stammers in reply, why may not 
orthodoxy continue to say, Those Hebrew writers were 
under the spell of an inspiration that stimulated their 
intellectual faculties, enabling them to do a work otherwise 
impossible? 

But the evidence of intellectual stimulation is no less 
conclusive in case of the New Testament writers. 

The larger number of the epistles, fourteen out of the 
twenty-one were written by a genius and scholar who would 
seem to require less mental stimulation than the Evange- 
lists. The Apocalypse, will be mentioned elsewhere in the 
discussion. 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 47 

Beginning then with the writings of the Evangelists, 
there is discovered a literature of such peculiar qualities 
that, "a fool, though a wayfaring man," can read and easily 
understand it, and yet written with such literary skill that 
men of the most thorough scholastic training bow rever- 
ently before it, and with such vividness that the one de- 
scribed appears not to be dead at all, but alive and upon the 
earth. 

And the facts and teachings gathered by those Evan- 
gelists are so written and reach such depths in human souls 
that they can be translated into other languages without 
losing their peculiar power or charm. 

Men, the best qualified to judge, do not hesitate to say 
that the poorest rendering of the New Testament even in 
the clumsiest dialect of any one of the five hundred lan- 
guages and dialects into which it has been translated, is 
" quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged 
sword " when addressed to the transgressor, and likewise 
is more helpful and fuller of consolation to troubled hearts, 
though only a translation, than is any other book, native 
to any tongue spoken among men. 

Literary criticism has recognized and commented upon 
this characteristic of universality and adaptation, but on 
ordinary, or naturalistic grounds the critic fails of an ade- 
quate explanation. There is certainly nothing in the genius 
of the Greek tongue, though a remarkable language, that can 
account for these phenomena; nor was there anything in the 
scenery and atmosphere of Judea, or in the waters of the 
Sea of Galilee, or in the fishing boats and nets of Peter, 
James and John that could have endowed those men with 
this unique and consummate skill that was able to weave 
their selected materials into a record that challenges the 
admiration of the most critical, scholarly and profound 
thinkers of this twentieth century. 



48 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

Does the critic say that this laudation of the literature 
of the Gospel is too extravagant ? 

The reply is, No, at least to one who has made it a care- 
ful study and at the same time has entered thoroughly 
into the spirit of it. 

Dean Stanley, in the preface of his History of the Jewish 
Church, quotes with approval from Professor Ewald, the 
celebrated orientalist and Bible critic, these words: " In 
this little book, the New Testament, is contained all the 
wisdom of the world." And there are ten thousand other 
scholars, well versed in comparative literature who enter- 
tain no less exalted views of those marvellous records. How, 
therefore, can the critic escape the conviction that those 
writers of the New Testament were either extraordinary 
literary geniuses or else, in doing their work, were helped 
by some power, or force outside of themselves ? 

There is in this connection a fact of no inconsiderable 
importance in its bearing upon this discussion that should 
not be passed unnoticed; it has to do with the unaccount- 
able conduct of Christ, unless the writers of the Gospel were 
to receive supernatural aid. 

As every one knows it is considered essential to have 
laws when enacted properly recorded; or when one is 
entrusted with an important embassage to have all docu- 
ments relating to it written and authoritatively subscribed 
and attested. So, too, when an esteemed author dies before 
revising his books, or a business man, before settling his 
affairs or making his will, it is spoken of as a very grave 
oversight. 

Now the point is this, that Christ who appears to have 
known perfectly how soon would end the tragedy of his 
life, and who repeatedly spoke of the supreme importance 
of his doctrines and words, never wrote anything except 
once, and then, as we are told, with his finger, in the dust. 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 49 

Nor during his life time, as far as is known, did he ever 
command anything to be written, nor did he revise any- 
thing that others had written. 

But this teacher, classed among the wisest, merely chose 
twelve men from the ordinary walks of life to accompany 
him on his journeys, and had occasion more than once to ex- 
press surprise at their inability to comprehend him and his 
doctrines, and even at the last said to them, " O, without 
understanding and slow of heart! " 

Those men walked about with their Master, heard what 
he had to say, and saw what he did. That was all. He 
not only gave them no directions as to writing any record 
about himself, but expressly told them, to take no thought 
beforehand what to say. 

He thus left the teachings and work of his life in this 
most extremely hazardous shape, and did it with the utmost 
composure. 

What, therefore, is the key to this strange conduct, 
unless found in the following statement, among the last of 
his sayings ? " These things have I spoken unto you, while 
yet abiding with you. But the Comforter, even the Holy 
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall 
teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that 
I said unto you." 

Here, therefore, in the conduct of Christ, and in the 
words of Christ, is there not the most weighty, if not incon- 
testable evidence, that the Evangelists, while doing their 
literary work, were to be under the spell of the supernatural 
and that their intellectual faculties were to be quickened 
by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit ? 

At this point other questions of importance, which off 
and on have been under discussion, may be asked again, 
especially as they are in keeping with anniversary celebra- 
tions of this week upon which we have just entered. The 



50 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

questions are whether this Jesus of whom those fishermen 
of Galilee wrote was after all an historical personage, a 
common manual day laborer, the son of a carpenter and 
his wife, or was he merely a mythical make-up ? Did he do 
and say what is reported of him, or was it all manufactured 
out of whole cloth, or out of a few odds and ends that had 
been picked up by the Evangelists ? 

In other words, are the records of the life of Jesus as 
found in the Gospel authentic and reliable ? 

So far as the present discussion is concerned it makes 
no essential difference whether this question is answered in 
the affirmative or negative, for it is the New Testament as 
a body of literature written by men, some of whom had 
had no training in rhetorical composition, that is under 
examination. 

Here in these writings is found the portraiture of a 
character that by substantially a unanimous verdict, is 
perfect; a character that could not have been the natural 
product of the corrupt, sensual and murderous era of 
Tiberius, Caligula and Nero; a character as remote from , 
the Jewish type during the reign of the Herods as one can 
imagine; a character that was original, the like of which j 
never before, or since, has walked the earth. 

Does the critic reply that it is easy enough for orthodox 
people to exalt the fame and name of Jesus since they were j 
brought up that way, know no better and have heard nothing i 
else ? But that slur is no solution of the problem. 

Perhaps the most fitting reply will be two or three quota- 
tions from men who have borne the name of skeptic. 

Says the great Goethe, " the universal genius: " 

" I esteem the Gospels to be thoroughly genuine, for there shines forth 
from them the|reflected splendor'of la sublimity, proceeding from the person 
of Jesus Christ, of so divine a kind as only the divine could ever have mani- 
fested upon earth." 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 51 

M. Renan, the French free thinker speaks of Jesus thus: 

"Jesus is unique in everything, and nothing can compare with him. 
. . . He is a man of colossal dimensions, ' the Incomparable Man,' . . . the 
Adorable One, who shall preside over the destinies — to whom the universal 
conscience has decreed the title of Son of God. After him there is nothing 
more to develop and fructify. 

He was the creator of the eternal religion of humanity. . . . Between 
Thee and God there will no longer be any distinction." 

The concluding words of this Frenchman, in his Life of 

Jesus, are these: 

" Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be 
surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; his legend will 
call forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all 
ages will proclaim that, among the sons of men, there is none born greater 
than Jesus." 

This Renan is a long way in advance of some clergymen 
in our day and neighborhood, who are in " good and regular 
standing" in so-called orthodox churches. And had Renan 
been as logical as he was rhetorical the inevitable conclu- 
sion would have been orthodox. 

The following conversation between Mr. Emerson and 
the poet Whittier, in the house of a friend who heard it and 
reported the conversation to your speaker may be of interest: 

" The perfect man has not yet come, but is to come," said Mr. Emerson. 

" Thee will acknowledge, Friend Emerson," said Mr. Whittier, " that 
Jesus is the most perfect of all men who have yet appeared ?" 

" Yes," replied Mr. Emerson, "that I admit." 

" Thee will acknowledge," continued Mr. Whittier, " that we have not 
yet reached the standard which the life of Christ has set before us ? " 

" Yes," replied Mr. Emerson, " I suppose that must be granted." 

" Then," said Mr. Whittier, " ought thee not to receive this as the per- 
fect life until the more perfect makes its appearance ?" 

" And Mr. Emerson" said my friend, " cast his calm, blue 
eyes into the empty space, and was silent." 

To the question, " Why did you not take Jesus instead 
of Swedenborg to illustrate the religious character in your 
Representative Men? " Mr. Emerson replied: " That char- 
acter of Jesus requires a strong constitution to handle." 



52 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

Theodore Parker, too, has spoken well: 

" Jesus pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, 
and true as God. The philosophers, the poets, the prophets, the rabbis — 
he rises above them all. Yet Nazareth was no Athens, where philosophy 
breathed in the circumambient air; it had neither porch nor lyceum; not 
even a school of the prophets. There is God in the heart of this youth. 

That mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the Spirit of God, how 
it wrought in his bosom! Eighteen centuries have passed since the tide of 
humanity rose so high in Jesus; what man, or church, has mastered his 
thought and fully applied it to human life? Let the world answer in its 
cry of anguish." 

For these words one can forgive Mr. Parker for some 
of his sayings against what he termed " the popular theol- 
ogy ; " and even orthodoxy may cherish a sort of brotherly 
feeling towards him now, for his contention was more 
against the unworthy representatives of Christianity than 
against Christianity itself. And the whole world should com- 
mend him that he did not remain in orthodox pulpits while 
preaching unorthodox theology. 

Or, consider for a moment the impression that Jesus 
has made upon the world in which he had an active life of 
but three years. He spoke and the old order of things 
stopped, and a new one began. 

1 Jesus," as Mr. Emerson once said, " has not so much 
written his name in human history as that he has plowed 
his name into that history." 

Here is this morning's paper, the date of which is 
December 21, 1908. The letters you received and mailed the 
past year, bore the figures 1908 written inside and stamped 
outside. All private documents wills, deeds, mortgages 
and notes; all public documents, laws, and treaties; all 
books published during the past year bore the figures 1908 
— nineteen hundred and eight years from the birth of the 
one who measured up so high, that the world not only 
cannot lose sight of him, but can see no one else who 
approaches him; and the year 1909 will only repeat the 
story of 1908. So will it continue to the end of time. 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 53 

Next Friday the word Christmas will break from the 
lips of men, women and children round the world as fast 
as the sun can travel. And what does it mean? Ah! 
what does it not mean ? 

Has the whole civilized world been fooled by a myth, 
or by legends woven out of nothing, about somebody who 
was nobody, started by fishermen and a handful of women ? 

If that is so then our boasting twentieth century should 
bow its head in the most abject humiliation, or shake itself 
free (if it can) from the delusions that have enthralled it. 

And here, too, is Christianity, the mightiest force on 
earth, wholly inexplicable except on the basis of the facts 
recorded concerning that man who " has plowed his name 
into the world's history." O that the critic could feel the 
force of what is involved in the words, Anno Domini, 
Christmas and Christianity! 

But return to the point of departure. Did those writers 
of the New Testament, unaided, invent that character ? 
Those fishermen invent that character that is moulding 
the dates and destinies of the world! 

If they did, then let the twentieth century stand with 
uncovered head in the presence of the most sovereign literary 
geniuses that this world ever has known. 

Is there anything imaginable more absurd than to think 
that Galilean Jews originated a Christ who never tried like 
a Stoic to conceal his tears, but showed them unwiped on 
his face when looking upon Jerusalem, and at the grave 
of a friend; whose lips the next day were lips of thunder, 
whose assaults on hypocrites were lurid with the fires of 
hell, who rebuked demons, " and often acted like an angry 
God — but always like a God ? " 

But before leaving this point notice more particularly 
the words said to have been spoken by this personage of 
whom the Evangelists wrote. 



54 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

Recall the sermon on the Mount; those four tran- 
scendent chapters in the Gospel of John — the fourteenth, 
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth — the conversation 
with the woman at the well; the parables of the Sower, 
the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Pharisee and 
Publican, the Ten Virgins, and the Lost Sheep. 

These writings are in our hands, are read by us daily 
(if we are wise), and all through the centuries have chal- 
lenged the world's attention and admiration. 

Listen to other announcements of the Christ in which 
he speaks of coming into this world to redeem men, reconcile 
them to God and give them strength to be ethically as 
perfect as the Father in heaven. 

And what shall be our estimate of these other sayings: 

"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, 

it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit," 

a passage almost unmatched in its profound and scientific 

suggestiveness; and the words, " Whosoever looketh on a 

woman," with the startling condemnation that follows,words 

that probe the heart of humanity as does no other sentence 

ever spoken; and the words, " Consider the lilies of the 

field how they grow," in which is embodied the most 

beautiful lesson of faith and trust that can be found in any 

of the world's prose or poetry; and the words: 

" Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of 
cold water . . . shall in no wise lose his reward; . . .Are not two sparrows 
sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without 
your Father; . . Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto 
me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 

With such sentences of delicate tenderness, brilliant 
as flawless diamonds and beautiful as fire-opals do the 
reported teachings of Christ everywhere abound. And 
dare the critic say that they were invented without help 
or prompting, having been written with an ease and a readi- 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 55 

ness equal to that of the world's masters in rhetorical 
expression ? 

But there are sayings reported that have artistic severity 
as well as artistic beauty. 

When that myth of the critic stood before the Scribes 

and Pharisees, he was no longer the mild-eyed, gentle-spoken 

young prophet, with golden locks parted in the middle, 

but became as Edwin Markham says, 

" The Lion of God uttering thunders of a mighty poetry and hurling 
his seven denunciations against the hypocrites. In one breath they are 
' whited sepulchers ; ' in the next they are ' serpents, offspring of vipers,' that 
shall not escape the judgment of hell." 

And when he overthrew the tables of the money-changers, 
flinging their belongings down the steps of the Temple and 
driving the traffickers into the street, his command, " Take 
these things hence," had the emphasis that needs no 
multiplying of words to express a divine indignation. 

And when they thought to trap him, his reply, " He 
that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at 
her," set them going till not one of the accusers was left 
behind. Here is no waste of words. Here is the superb 
grandeur of style — the " power of saying the greatest 
things with the most rigid simplicity." 

" The diction used about Christ by most modern writers 
has been quite sweet and submissive," says the brilliant 
author of Orthodoxy, " but the diction used by Christ is 
quite curiously gigantesque. It is full of camels leaping 
through needles, and mountains hurled into the sea." 

But we may challenge the critic once more and ask him 

to grasp if he can, the import of such words as these: 

" Before Abraham was I am ;" " Destroy this temple and in three days 
I will raise it up ;" " I lay down my life that I may take it again ;" " I am 
the resurrection and the Hfe ;" " I go to prepare a place for you ;" " All 
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." 



56 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

Did fishermen ever before, or since, originate or conceive 
such thoughts as these ? 

Or, listen to the commission that Christ is said to have 

given his disciples: 

" Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with 
you alway, even unto the end of the world." 

Only a lunatic, liar or a God would speak such words. 

But there are other words put into the mouth of this 
mythical or legendary personage by the fisher-folk of Galilee 
that reach beyond the present dispensation. 

Christ is represented as saying that He is to come again 
in great and awful majesty to judge the world, and right 
the wrongs that have perplexed and vexed the souls of men 
ever since the dawn of human history. The story of that 
coming is the rapid out-lining of " a vast poem of pity and 
terror." There are depicted the appalling separations, 
unmatched in any literature — " two men in one bed, one 
taken, the other left; two women grinding at the mill, 
one taken, the other left ;" the sudden wreck of the world, 
its people and cities swept to their doom as with the flood 
of Noah, or the fires of Sodom; the righteous shining forth 
as the brightness of the sun; Christ coming not from 
Nazareth in the garb of a Jewish peasant, but as if clothed 
with flashes of lightning that gleam out of one part of the 
heavens and shine to every other part. What mythical 
hero was ever described with such poetic and terrific 
splendor! " And so passes before us in a few brief, strong 
strokes the outlines of an immense drama that dwarfs 
every other drama to a mere tumult of ants in the corner 
of a forgotten field." 

Search the Roman Empire, every province of it, and at 
any time during the first and second centuries, or for that 



INSPIRATION BY MENTAL STIMULATION 57 

matter any part of any other century, a range covering the 
eras of Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Scipio, and can 
there be found any literature the equal of this produced in 
a despised Jewish province of that great Empire ? 

Ye scholars and men who think, try to imagine that 
two " frightened, fugitive fishermen " of Galilee, a tax 
collector of Capernaum and a doctor of medicine, a native 
of Antioch, unaided and with no literature in the world for 
a model, worked up these descriptions of the terrifying 
end of the world, the splendor of the second coming of 
Christ, the awfulness of the final judgment, and then put 
the words describing them on to the lips of a myth or on to 
the lips of an ordinary Jewish peasant, around whom 
various legends had grown up within a hundred years after 
his birth! 

A more absurd and irrational piece of nonsense than 
this mythical and legendary theory never has been invented 
with which to delude the human race and rob Christ of his 
glory. 

The conclusion is irrefutable — without the living 
presence of the God-man whose deeds were witnessed, 
whose words were spoken and heard, and without the help 
of some supernatural agency, there were not brains enough 
in the Jewish nation, or in the whole Roman Empire to 
have written the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 



THIRD LECTURE 

December 28th, 1908. 

Inspiration in the Use of Words; 
or Verbal Inspiration 



THIRD LECTURE 

INSPIRATION IN THE USE OF WORDS; OR 
VERBAL INSPIRATION 

BY verbal inspiration is meant the suggestion of words 
by the Holy Spirit to those who wrote the Bible. 

At timest here has been tumultuous and even violent 
discussion on the subject, ill-becoming those who should 
rather search for peace and harmony. 

On the one hand the contention has been that there is 
such a gulf between the Holy Spirit and the ear and tongue 
of men that the theory of verbal inspiration is unreasonable, 
so much so that it is irrational. 

On the other hand the defenders of the theory insist that 
no line can be drawn between inspiration of thoughts and 
words; that when a man is inspired the intellectual processes 
are the same between the Holy Spirit and the inspired man 
as between two persons when engaged in conversation, and 
that exchange of thoughts must always be by words. 

As to the exact strength of the contending factions, there 
is difference of opinion. The author of a series of exceed- 
ingly interesting and scholarly pamphlets entitled, Bible 
Numerics, who is a firm believer in verbal inspiration, thus 
states his judgment as to the current belief at the present 
time: — 

"The verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is now so effectually abandoned 
even among professedly orthodox people that not a single scholar holds it. 
And even to profess to try to prove it is sufficient cause, in the estimation of 
scholars, for refusing even a hearing for it." 

61 



62 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

While quite confident that this writer, Mr. Ivan Panin, 
has over-estimated the number of those opposed to verbal 
inspiration, still it must be confessed that the theory in our 
latitude has neither a very large, nor enthusiastic following. 

The more accurate statement, however, would be this : 
The verbal inspiration of the Bible has been advocated and 
is now held by eminent scholars, but is rejected by many 
others equally eminent. 

It is a matter of regret that we have no time to review 
some of the more valuable literature on the subject, or give 
the reasons that first and last have been advanced by both 
metaphysicians and theologians, for and against the theory. 

The names of two or three men of scholarly rank may, 
however, be mentioned. 

Professor Richard Rothe states his opinion thus: 

" On the whole, words and thoughts are inseparable. There are no 
thoughts without words; they cannot be expressed and held fast otherwise 
than in words and by means of words." 

Dr. Abraham Kuyper, rector of the Free University 
of Amsterdam, called " the prince of Dutch theologians," 
contends that the inspiration of thoughts without words 
would be an unintelligible process; that one might as well 
talk of a tune without notes, or a mathematical sum without 
figures; he goes so far as to say that any one who holds that 
inspiration concerns the thoughts only, and not the words, 
"is no psychologist, nor even a good thinker." 

He also claims that in Germany the theory of verbal 
inspiration is just now fast coming into the ascendency. 

With Professor Rothe and Rector Kuyper are to be 
classed Professor Nosgen of Rostock, Dr. Koellner, author 
of Theopneustie and several others. 

On the other hand Pastor Anderson of Flensburg 
probably well represents the attitude of most of the German 



VERBAL INSPIRATION 63 

thinkers, except those of the " Free Churches." His state- 
ment is this: 

" The doctrine of verbal inspiration is not an integral part of the faith 
of the Evangelical Church, but is a well-meant, though at bottom unbiblical 
invention of the theologians. 

This doctrine to a certain extent is originally derived in part from the 
Judaism of the Talmud and in part from hellenistic and heathen ideas, 
which have found their way into Christian theology through Philo. 

To return to this doctrine is a return to the letter theology of the Jewsh 
Scribes and to give our congregations stones instead of bread." 

One may well ask, therefore, if in any way it is possible 
to harmonize these conflicting opinions of good men and 
distinguished theologians ? 

Perhaps not in every particular and yet, with more 
accuracy in definition, with a little yielding on part of 
the contestants and the keeping in mind a statement already 
made, that God interposes special aid only when and to 
such extent as is necessary to accomplish his purpose, 
much controversy on the subject may be saved, and the 
contestants brought nearer together. That is, if verbal 
inspiration was necessary to answer the divine purpose, then, 
those who believe in supernaturalism will admit that the 
Holy Spirit did suggest, or could have suggested, words as 
well as thoughts, and that if God's purposes could have 
been better accomplished by the inspiration, or suggestion 
of every word employed, then it must be still further ad- 
mitted that every word in the original documents composing 
the Bible was suggested, or inspired, by the Holy Spirit. 

It would seem to be, therefore, more than anything 
else a question of how best the Holy Spirit could accom- 
plish the purpose intended. 

It should, however, be borne in mind, that verbal in- 
spiration does not necessarily imply that the Holy Spirit 
dictated mechanically, or audibly the words to be employed, 
though in some instances this appears to have been done. 



64 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

If the Holy Spirit evoked from the consciousness of 
the Bible writer words which without that aid would not 
have occurred to the mind, that would be verbal inspiration; 
or, if the Holy Spirit aided the Bible writer in the choice 
of certain words from among others already in the field of 
consciousness, that too, would be verbal inspiration; or 
if the Holy Spirit suggested without delay an unfamiliar, 
or for that matter, a familiar word; or suggested the best 
arrangement of words in framing the sentence, there would 
be, in each case, verbal inspiration. 

Now if these different processes had been recognized, 
either one of which is just as really verbal inspiration as 
either of the others, there would have been saved a large 
amount of discussion among the friends of the Bible. 

That there is at present a measure of scientific evidence 
in support of the possibility of verbal inspiration no 
thoughtful person will question. 

Certain phenomena, long since recognized and lately 
coming into prominent notice have established the fact, 
notwithstanding the supposed gulf between the Holy Spirit 
and the human ear, that dictation of words by the Holy 
Spirit to the human consciousness is not unreasonable at 
all, but is a perfectly sane supposition. 

The reasoning is this: 

Every person in this audience lives in an invisible, as 
well as in a visible community. 

And every center of consciousness (or every mind) acts 
more or less perceptibly upon every other center of con- 
sciousness (or upon every other mind), and each in turn 
is acted upon by all others. And besides there is in every 
person a something that recognizes its own distinct per- 
sonality; and this same something, or something else that 
is in every person recognizes personalities that are outside 
of each one's self. 



VERBAL INSPIRATION 65 

And it is doubtless true that each personal consciousness 
is in contact with every other personal consciousness in the 
universe, whether infinite, human, angelic, or satanic. 
Almost everyone at times feels that he is not alone, though 
in a forest, or on the sea, or mountain top, but is surrounded 
by " principalities and powers. " It is the same in the 
metaphysical as in the physical world. Every mind acts 
upon every other mind, as every particle of matter acts 
upon every other particle from one boundary of the universe 
to every other. 

These are scientific postulates, concerning which there 
can be no doubt. It would seem to follow, therefore, that 
if one mind can touch another, then one mind can influence 
another, a possibility recognized by the use of such words as 
hypnotism and telepathy. 

Professor Hugo Musterburg, an authority on these 
subjects, who has brought hundreds of persons under this 
hypnotic influence, makes these statements: 

" There is no magic fluid, no mysterious power afloat. Everyone can 
suggest something to everyone else. It is the idea that is strong enough to 
overcome the idea in another mind that produces the effects wondered at. 
Hypnotism is only re-enforced suggestion." 

And it has been shown over and over again that the 
hypnotizer not only can awaken such thoughts as he may 
choose in the mind of his subject, but can just as easily 
control the verbal expression. 

Now since there is this influence and even control of 
one person's mind over another, why may not orthodox Chris- 
tians, without being thought belated or irrational, believe 
that the Holy Spirit in certain instances so far controlled 
the speech as well as the thoughts of holy men who yielded 
themselves fully to His leadings, that they employed the 
very words that were supernaturally awakened in their 
minds, or fashioned on their lips ? 



66 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

While one need not go quite so far as to say that it 
would be impossible for the Holy Spirit to make revelations 
except by the use of words, yet there need be no hesitation 
in saying, on well established psychological grounds, that 
the Holy Spirit in every instance, could have suggested 
the identical words employed and would have done so 
provided the divine purpose could have been better accom- 
plished in that, rather than in any other way. 

It may also be said that the world is doubtless on the 
eve of greater discoveries in mind phenomena than ever 
yet have been dreamed of, and that psychology has not yet 
by any means, had its last word as to verbal inspiration. 

The possibility of verbal inspiration having been shown 
to be a reasonable supposition, the next step leads to evi- 
dence supporting the theory. Attention is called first to 
the testimony of those best qualified to speak on this subject, 
the Bible writers themselves. For example, the following 
passage from the Book of Exodus: 

" And Moses said unto the Lord, Oh, Lord, I am not eloquent, neither 
heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: for I am slow of 
speech and of a slow tongue. And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made 
man's mouth ? or who maketh a man dumb or deaf, or seeing or blind ? 
Is it not I, the Lord? Now, therefore, go, and I wiLl be with thy mouth, 
and teach thee what thou shalt speak." 

And the identical words Moses was commanded to use 
he says were given to him. 

Nor should the fact be overlooked that though Moses, 
according to his own account of himself was constitutionally 
slow of speech, and therefore disqualified to stand as spokes- 
man for Israel before Pharaoh, yet when the time came 
for speaking, his words appear to have been accurate, ready, 
powerful, and remain so to this day. 

As to the writing of the covenant the reading is this: 

" And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the 
tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee, and with Israel." 



VERBAL INSPIRATION 67 

From Moses pass to the era of King David. There is no 
question that David believed^that he had received from 
some source remarkable plans and specifications for the 
construction of the tabernacle and temple. The words 
used in his address to his son Solomon, are these: 

" All this the Lord made me understand in writingjby 
his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern." That 
these words mean some sort of verbal dictation there is 
scarcely room for question; they appear to mean that the 
words were either spoken to David, essentially the same as 
he repeated them in the hearing of Solomon, or else they 
were impressed upon the mind of David, or were awakened 
in his consciousness by a supernatural agency. 

But perhaps the most suggestive fact of all is this, that 
no student of these subjects is able to explain how David 
could have come into possession of these plans and speci- 
fications, unless there were verbal inspiration. That is, 
up to the time of David the whole Semitic family was 
singularly destitute of architectural genius. 

And, indeed, no beautiful architecture of any kind, is 
found in the world until after the building of the Temple in 
Jerusalem. There were massive structures in Babylon 
and Egypt that were imposing, but not beautiful. 

In a published essay by the accomplished architect 
William Wilkins, entitled The Temple at Jerusalem, the 
Type of Grecian Architecture, it is claimed that the finest 
specimens of architecture which adorned the Acropolis 
were suggested by the Temple on Mount Zion. And 
Robert Wood, in a treatise bearing the title, The Origin of 
Building, reaches essentially the same conclusion. 

Ruskin, the great master in the realm of aesthetics, in 
his Modern Painters ( Chapter on " Turnerian Light," ) 
thus closes the section on color: 



68 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

" Finally the ascertainment of the sanctity of color is not left to human 
genius. It is directly stated in the Scriptures in the sacred chord of color 
(blue, purple, and scarlet, with white and gold), as appointed for the taber- 
nacle. This chord, is the fixed base of all coloring with the workmen of 
every great age, and the invariable base of all that is beautiful in Missal 
painting." 

This certainly is a singular and suggestive fact that 
the coloring and tapestry ordered for the tabernacle har- 
monize perfectly with the ideal conceptions of modern art 
and aesthetics. 

And, as was said before, it is hardly conceivable that 
David could have come into possession of these matters of 
dimension and coloring, unless in the way he said, and 
that was by verbal dictation. 

The Old Testament prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel 
and Daniel, each testify that the words they employed 
were given by the Lord God. 

Isaiah began his magnificent prophecies with these 
words: 

" Hear O Heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord 

hath spoken. And I heard the voice of the Lord 

and he said, Go and tell my people." Then Isaiah was 
given words to speak. And throughout his prophecy, 
announcement after announcement is introduced with the 
words, " The Lord said unto me," and " Thus saith the 
Lord" 

In the introduction of the prophecy of Jeremiah are 

these words: 

" Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I can not speak: for I am a child. 
But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child, for to whomsoever I shall 
send thee thou shalt go and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt 
speak. Be not afraid because of them : for I am with thee to deliver thee, 
saith the Lord. Then the Lord put forth His hand, and touched my mouth, 
and the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth." 

The prophecy of Ezekiel contains this announcement: 

*' Moreover He said unto me, Son of man, all my words that I shall 
speak unto thee receive in thy heart, and hear with thine ears. And go, get 



'verbal inspiration 69 

thee to them of the captivity, unto the children of thy people, and speak 
unto them, and tell them, Thus saith the Lord God." 

In the closing chapter of the Book of Daniel these words, 

not understood, were put into the mouth of the prophet: 

" And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what 
shall be the issue of these things ? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel, for 
the words are shut up and sealed till the time of the end." 

In this instance there is certainly evidence of verbal 
inspiration, for the prophet asked the meaning of the words 
dictated to him. What stronger proof could there be that 
not the mind of Daniel alone, but his lips were under the 
direction of a supernatural agency. 

And every reader of the Old Testament is familiar with 
such announcements as these: 

" The Word of the Lord came unto me saying; " "His word was in 
my tongue; " " Speak these words ;" and " Speak this word unto them 
whether they will hear or forbear." 

Now consider for a moment the character of these men, 
Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, who testify 
that words came to their lips as well as thoughts to their 
minds. 

There is no hesitation in saying that there is not a critic 
of the Bible in Christendom, who in intellectual greatness 
and power, can measure up to either of these men. 

The historian, Graetz, in his History of the Jews, pays 
this tribute to Moses: 

" Among all law givers, founders of states and teachers of mankind, 
none have equalled Moses. He transformed a horde of slaves into a nation 
and imprinted on it the seal of everlasting existence." 

Where is the critic anywhere on the face of the earth 
to whom such tribute could be paid ? And among scholars 
there is no question that there are specimens of oratory in the 
Book of Deuteronomy from the lips of Moses that are equal 
to any of the speeches of Pericles, or those of Demosthenes or 



70 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

those of Cicero, though these brilliant Greek and Roman 
orators were trained in all the arts of public speaking. 

And Isaiah, another of the Bible writers, who said that 
God put words into his mouth, was not like Moses the 
founder of a nation, but was an orator of powerful speech, 
and the greatest of the Hebrew prophets. 

Says Renan in his scholarly History of the People of 
Israel: 

" Ktiah \\ ;i> the greatest of a race of giants. He gave the final form to 
Hebrew ideas. He is not the founder of Juadaism; he is its classical genius." 

And the higher critic, Professor Driver, in his Intro- 
duction to the Literature of the Old Testament, pays Isaiah this 
encomium: 

"Isaiah's poetical genius u superb. His characteristics are grandeur 
and heauty of conception, wealth of imagination, com pros \, and 

splendor of diction." 

Where is the modern Bible critic who can wear those 
honors ? Certainly Professor Driver is destitute of them. 
Or where is the modern Bible critic that stands anywhere 
within sight of |eremiah and Ezekiel, those patriots, of 
amazing foresight and of fiery, poetic expression ? Or, 
who is the critic that anyone in the world would think of 
comparing in anv respect, with Daniel, the learned and 
God-fearing prophet, who was prime minister of four of 
the greatest monarchs of antiquity — Nebuchadnezzar, 
Belshazzar, Darius and Cyrus. 

Such were those Jehovah prophets, whose word in ordi- 
nary matters would not for a moment be questioned, who 
would not have told a lie to save their lives, whose minds 
were of the highest order, and whose power in literary 
expression rarely has been equalled — those were the men 
who affirmed, with no recompense except persecution, that 
they spoke and wrote the identical words that the Lord God 
had supernaturally dictated to them, or had awakened in 



VERBAL INSPIRATION 71 

their consciousness. What possible ground is there for 
rejecting their testimony? 

But, without pausing for an answer, your attention is 
directed to other Old Testament evidences of verbal in- 
spiration. 

No worker in literature need be told of the difficulty 
often confronting one when trying to find words to clothe 
especially the sublimer thoughts that dawn upon the con- 
sciousness. 

Mr. Emerson once remarked that he would exchange 
all that he had written if he could put into words thoughts 
that had passed through his mind in a single hour. 

Now, as already shown (p. 31, etc.) the Old Testament 
writers, under the spell of mental stimulation, came into 
possession of the grandest conceptions possible. Would 
they not, therefore, have been overwhelmed in attempting to 
give expression to those magnificent thoughts unless there 
had been literary or verbal as well as mental stimulation ? 

A fact, or two, by way of illustration, may add force to 
the question. 

John Milton has been honored of late, quite over the 
world, and very justly so. 

His celebrated Samson Agonistes is in some respects, a 
remarkable drama, but when compared with the Bible 
story from which it is taken, it seems to any scholarly critic 
scarcely more than a " stage play," artificial throughout, 
lacking entirely the simple directness of the Old Testament 
narrative. Such in substance is the opinion of those whose 
profession is to compare and pass judgment upon litera- 
ture. 

The dramas of Shakespeare fare no better when brought 
into competition with the dramatic poetry of the Bible. 

In narrative literature the Old Testament is likewise 
supreme. 



72 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

The stories of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Laban, 
of the meeting of Joseph, first with his brethren, then with 
his father, in rhetorical expression make modern narrative 
writing seem only trivial and ephemeral. 

Professor G. H. Gardner of Harvard University, in a 
recent publication, The Bible as English Literature, 
makes this unquestionably correct statement: 

" Much raiding of the Bible will .soon bring one to an understanding 
of the mood in which all modem rhetorical art Menu a juggling with trifles 

and an attempt to catch the unessential, when the everlasting verities are 
slipping by. The Israelite story-teller left the facts to speak for themselves, 
as they have tor all the centuries since. The (jiiiet self-confidence of this 
method makes modern story-telling, even in the restrained mechanism of 
the Greek drama, seem to bbot and strive for justification. All the great 
literature of the (i neks bsa when placed beside the compression and massive- 

ness of the old Testament" 

Boston and other cities have their Browning clubs. 
That poet is extravagantly praised and in some quarters 
almost worshiped. 

His Saul is pronounced the greatest Biblical poem since 
Milton, and is perhaps his masterpiece, but when compared 
with the Bible storv the supremacv of artlessness over art 
at once appears. 

Or what has Browning ever written that approaches 
in sublimity the Book of [ob ; If Browning clubs would 
spend one hour with that Hebrew author when they spend 
ten with Browning, their admiration would rather abruptly 
change its base. There is nothing in the best of Browning 
that in any way measures up to the opening scene in that 
Bible drama, where the council chamber of Jehovah is 
thrown open, or that equals the satanic challenges and 
satanic cyclones that wrecked houses and killed the inmates, 
except the one servant whose repeated cry was " I only am 
escaped alone to tell thee." 

Or what is there in Browning that equals in pathos and 
dignity the wailings of the smitten hero, the harsh accusa- 



VERBAL INSPIRATION 73 

tions of his friends and his heart-broken replies and remon- 
strances ? 

Or what is there from the pen of Browning that in gran- 
deur matches the Hebrew author when binding unicorns 
and stars, or when describing horses laughing at trumpets 
and spears, behemoths drinking up rivers, and leviathans 
with nostrils sending out volumes of smoke, and with 
mouths belching lurid flames into the darkness ? 

Or what is there in Browning that equals the calm and 
beauty after the cyclone and tempest, with the last days 
better than the first that dawned upon the hero who had 
conquered friends, wife and devil — the entire drama never 
for a moment losing sight of the ethical and religious intent ? 

From any point of view it comes near literarv sacrilege 
to compare Browning with the Hebrew author of the Book 
of Job. Browning greatly aggravates many of his readers, 
with his abiding self consciousness, his " striving for 
superlatives, his " dancing whirlwind of words " and his 
blinding and bewildering obscuritv. The Hebrew author, 
writing with the ease of perfect familiarity and mastery, 
portraying the mightiest things, even omnipotence in terms 
suited to the subject, in sentences of majestic reserve, clear as 
crystals stirs the profoundest emotions of the reader, but 
always with assurance and an uplift. 

The writer of the book of Job is never thought of by 
the reader; his hero is omnipresent and immortal, and that 
is the highest type of literary achievement, which rarely is 
reached by Robert Browning. 

Now returns the main question, — How was it possible 
that those Old Testament Hebrew writers, in accuracy, 
beauty, clearness and force of expression, in narrative, 
literature, in dramatic composition, in lyric and prophetic 
poetry, with odds against them, were and are able to stand 
pre-eminent among the world's masters in literature, ancient 



74 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

and modern, unless somehow the Holy Spirit had com- 
municated with them, giving them without conscious 
effort on their part, apt words and sentences to express 
thoughts that otherwise would have palsied lip and tongue ? 

Evidence of verbal inspiration gathered from the New 
Testament next claims attention. And first in the sciences 
of anatomy and acoustics, there are discovered certain 
phenomena, that cannot well be passed in silence and that 
may be spoken of at this point as well as elsewhere in 
the discussion. 

There are words that orthodoxv claims had their origin 
or cause in the invisible world, such for instance as those 
said to have been heard by the shepherds of Bethlehem, 
announcing the birth of Christ, the mvsterv of which, even 
if the record is true, is scarcely more wonderful, all things 
considered, than the greetings and carols of the Christmas 
week just past — echoes of the anthem heard two thousand 
vears ago. 

To those phenomena belong the words said to have been 
heard at the baptism of Jesus on the shores of the Jordan, 
also words reported by the evangelists said to have been 
heard by three disciples at the transfiguration, and other 
words said to have been heard by the apostle Paul on the 
road to Damascus, others bv Peter on the house-top at Joppa, 
and others by John on the isle of Patmos. 

In the Old Testament, words from invisible sources, 
and from bush and beast are likewise reported. 

To one who heartily believes in the supernatural and 
in the credibility of the Bible, there will of course be no 
question that the reported words were actually heard. 
And to anyone who think^deeply these phenomena need 
occasion no more surprise than ordinary human speech. 



VERBAL INSPIRATION 75 

A speaker emits a bit of breath through the vocal organs; 
vibrations are produced in the atmosphere that reach the 
drum of someone's ear; a tremor is conveyed along the ear 
tubes and disturbs or jolts a grouping of brain cells. The 
mind of the hearer recognizes by the peculiarity of the jolt 
what thought was in the mind of the speaker — all of 
which is one of the subtlest mysteries in the universe. 

Now for the application of these facts to the subject in 
hand. 

The Psalmist asked the question, — " He that planted 
the ear, shall he not hear ? He that formed the eye, shall he 
not see ? ", and he might have added, Cannot He who up- 
holds all things by the word of His power cause a vibration 
in the atmosphere, or a tremor in the organs of hearing, or 
a peculiar jolt to a group of brain cells, as easily as can a 
breath of air from the lips of a human being ? 

If he cannot, is he not more helpless than a coal-pit 
worker, or street sweeper, or a child two days old ? 

But if he can do this, that is if he can cause a slight 
disturbance or vibration in the atmosphere, or a slight 
tremor in the tubes of the ear, or a jolt in the cells of the 
brain, then verbal inspiration, as a mechanical and physio- 
logical process is just as simple as the act of breathing, and 
the song announcing the birth of Christ calls for no miracle 
greater than human speech, at least for but one miracle, 
the greatest of all — the existence and presence of God. 

And the music and songs sometimes heard by the dying, 
may be the vibration of ear-tubes or brain-cell, caused by 
the touch of invisible fingers, or by the breath of God to chase 
away the loneliness of the so-called Dark Valley. 

But let us consider evidence of a little different charac- 
ter and perhaps more satisfactory to our friends the critics. 

After the death of Christ the evangelists who had spent 
most of their lives in humble occupations, were called upon 



76 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

to stand before kings and rulers. They were forced to 
reply to charges made against them, and to answer the most 
difficult questions suddenly propounded by their accusers 
and adversaries. 

The brightest minds as every one knows, are frequently 
disconcerted under such conditions; men stammer and strug- 
gle to find the word desired and often need prompting. 

If, therefore, those New Testament speakers were able 
to employ language the most admirable possible, to the 
amazement of all the bystanders, would it not seem that 
some supernatural agency must have prompted speech, 
as well as thoughts ? 

In the New Testament record the temptations and 
trials, the controversies, frailties and mishaps of the apos- 
tles and evangelists are recounted with more or less explicit- 
ness, but there is no hint that those men ever were embar- 
rassed, or that thev deliberated a moment for sentence or 
word, even when called upon to speak before enemies, 
multitudes, or mobs. Nor was it necessarv for them to 
studv all night to know what to sav in the morning. There 
does not appear to have been anv weighing of words; such 
phrases and qualifving clauses as, "that is to say," or " in 
other words," or " I mean this," common enough among 
other speakers and writers, are not found in any of their 
addresses or sermons; nor did thev use note or manuscript. 

Paul speaks of parchments, but he did not send for 
them when preaching at Corinth, or Ephesus; it was when 
he was confined in a Roman prison. 

Such excuses as, " I have no sermon thought out, or 
no remarks suited for this occasion," were never offered by 
Paul, by Peter, or the rest. 

The apostle Peter had received no scholastic, ororatorical 
training. He had at his tongue's end the harangue and talk 
of sea and ship, and could swear with the next man, but 



VERBAL INSPIRATION 



77 



the making of a connected and choice as well as thrilling 
speech before thousands of people, was quite a different 
affair, and on natural grounds, out of the question. But 
his immortal and impromptu sermon on the Day of Pen- 
tecost, and his speech before the elders and rulers in Jeru- 
salem, for logical arrangement and rhetorical finish are 
such masterpieces, that they would have been creditable 
if spoken by any scholar or advocate in the Jewish common- 
wealth or in the Roman empire. 

If any one doubts this statement, let him master the 
laws of logical arrangement, the rules of rhetorical com- 
position and apply them to that sermon and speech, and 
he will doubt no longer. 

The apostle Paul more than once intimated that his 
speech was little other than contemptible and yet more apt 
and apparently ready words never were spoken than when 
he was addressing the Greeks on Mars Hill, or when speak- 
ing before King Agrippa. Those speeches will bear the 
scrutiny of the best trained masters in the arts of eloquence 
and logic. 

The apostle John had been a fisherman until the three 
years that found him under the tutelage of Christ. 

Later there came from his pen the A pocalypsr, with 
its bottomless pits, its vials of wrath, its islands flying from 
sight, its heavenly hosts, numbering M ten thousand times 
ten thousand and thousands of thousands," its crowns, 
sceptres, thrones, and its Paradise — representations that 
for majesty of conception and fitting rhetorical expression 
are unmatched outside of Bible literature and are only ap- 
proached by those who have drawn their thoughts from 
the Bible writings. 

Nor is that all; for the vision of that fisherman-apostle 
has been able to sustain Christian faith, and hope as no 
uninspired writing from an)' pen ever has done. So vivid 



7^ BIBLE INSPIRATION 

are the conceptions that the writer speaks in the present 
tense of things in the future, and so certain of accomplish- 
ment that they seem already to he taking place: — M And 
I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salva- 
tion and Strength, and the Kingdom of our God, and the 
power of his Christ. 91 

Now, in reviewing what has been said, is the critic pre- 
pared to give any rational explanation for the rhetorical ex- 
cellence of the New Testament historic records, or for that 

of the Speeches and sermons, theepistles, a nd Apocalypse, the 

last and most surprising of the New Testament writings? 

Until the ciitic is hettei equipped with facts and icasmis 
than he now is, orthodox) need not shrink from the theoi \ 

of verbal inspiration, as already defined, and as set forth 

in the words of the Mastei, among the last spoken to his 
disciples : 

" Settle it then-fun- in \<>ur hearts, not to meditate beforehand horn 
to rower, for I will rive pou a mouth and iriadom, which all pour adver- 
saria -hall not In- al.lr to withstand DOT ^ain>av VimI \vln-n th«\ 

lead yOU to judgment ami < 1«* li \ «T \oii U|», l>«- not ;in\i<.iis Ix'fort'hand what 
ye shall -|x-ak, hut whatsoever shall l><- ^iven you in that hour, that ipeefc 
_vc; for it is not ft that s|*-;ik, hut the 1 1 * » 1 _\. Gfaiogt.*' 



FOURTH LECTURE 

January 4, 1909 

Predictive and Visual Inspiration 



FOURTH LECTURE 

PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION 

THE type of inspiration to which attention is called in 
this address, is that which enabled the Bible writers 
to forecast the future. It is of two kinds, predictive and 
visual. 

I. PREDICTIVE INSPIRATION. 

To many minds there is no evidence of Bible inspiration 
more convincing than the prediction of events that took 
place long after the prophecies were uttered and recorded. 

It should be noted, in passing, that no one of the Jehovah 
prophets ever pretended to speak of the future from per- 
sonal knowledge, or from sagacity or worldly wisdom, but 
by agencies that were believed by them to be supernatural. 

" The word of the Lord came unto me saying," was 
often the thrilling introduction of the Old Testament proph- 
ecies. 

It may also be noted that while the predictive prophecies 
of the Old Testament began in the Garden of Eden they 
ended with Malachi, and that New Testament prophecy 
beginning with the birth of Christ ended with John on the 
island of Patmos. 

Outside of these limitations the Jews have no prophetic 
literature, nor is any other nation in possession of what can 
be called such literature. 

81 



8z 



BIBLE INSPIRATION 



Prophecies were spoken at the dawn of human history, 
others in the time of Noah whose remarkable fulfillment 
in both instances challenges the world's attention and inves- 
tigation. 

There were prophecies concerning ancient empires and 
kingdoms, those of Assyria, Babylon, Eygpt, Tyre and 
others, with their indisputable fulfillments. 

And, too, concerning the Jews there are prophecies 
whose fulfillment has confronted the skeptic on every page 
of history since the exodus of that people from Egyptian 
bondage. 

Christ, in history and prophecy, is a topic, more prolific 
than any other of which a scholarly student of the Bible 
speaks thus: 

" I have gone through Old Testament prophecy, and have collected 
one hundred and fifty-one definite predictions concerning the birth, life, 
ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, and glorifying of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Every one of them has been minutely fulfilled." 

These Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ 
were all written four hundred, and some of them sixteen 
hundred years before his nativity was announced to the 
shepherds on the hills of Bethlehem. 

Passing to the New Testament there are found proph- 
ecies concerning the spread and triumphs of Christianity 
that are now fulfilling in some of which the daily experi- 
ences and work of ourselves and our neighbors are silently 
taking their places. 

And the affairs of the mightiest nations on earth, and 
the quiet revolutions in the whole eastern world, especially 
in China, Japan, Turkey and on the islands of the sea, appear 
to be at the present time shaping themselves for the fulfill- 
ment of prophecies concerning the still greater triumphs of 
Christianity. 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION 83 

It would seem, therefore, if one can find in the field of 
prophecy no evidence of predictive inspiration, that such an 
one has a case of blindness that is total and incurable. 

It is, however, a fact of considerable interest to the 
orthodox believer that though critics with their philological 
batteries have been making almost continuous and very 
bold attacks upon the authenticity, credibility, genuineness 
and inspiration of the Bible, they have in the meantime 
been quietly withdrawing from the field of prophecy. 

The trouble seems to be that Bible prophecy, when 
approached with destructive intent, looms up, here and 
there, with such rugged defiance and is found so thoroughly 
impregnable, like the granite of the great continental 
mountain ranges, that our critics have wisely concluded 
to occupy themselves with other and less difficult matters. 

As you very well know, an entire discourse could be 
given on either of the predictions just mentioned, — 
those concerning historic nations and peoples or concern- 
ing Christ and Christianity, without exhausting it; yet 
owing to what has been an embarrassment all along, our 
time limitations, those magnificent prophecies with their 
startling fulfillment must be passed over, though with this 
relief, that you are already familiar with them. 

But there is a group of prophecies, not frequently dis- 
cussed, suggested by what has been much in your thought 
during the past week, thejnews of which were heralded over 
the world last Tuesday morning announcing one of the 
world's greatest tragedies the earthquake that devastated 
three of the beautiful provinces of Southern Italy, that 
may well engage our thought. They are scientific and 
foretell some things that are to take place on this earth 
sooner or later. 

The following, from the prophecy of Isaiah, is repre- 
sentative: 



84 



BIBLE INSPIRATION 



" Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath; 
for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old 
like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner. And 
all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled 
together as a scroll; and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off 
from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig-tree." 

The New Testament is fuller than the Old and is more 
explicit in its prophecies of these last things. The follow- 
ing announcement and exhortation are from the apostle Paul: 

" But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I 
write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so 
cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; 
then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with 
child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, 
that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, 
and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. 
Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober." 
* * * * 

" See that ye refuse not him that speaketh: for if they escaped not who 
refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn 
away from him that speaketh from heaven." * * * 

" Whose voice then shook the earth : but now he hath promised saying, 
Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, 
Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of 
things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. 
Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have 
grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly 
fear: For our God is a consuming fire." * * * 

Few sublimer conceptions ever entered the human 
mind than the one represented in the following words of 
the apostle John: 

" And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth 
lifted up his hand to heaven. And sware by him that liveth for ever and 
ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, 
and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, 
that there should be time no longer. * * * * 

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose 
face the earth and the heaven fled; away, and there was found no place for 
them." 

Our Lord, likewise, is represented by the evangelists 
as prophesying the ending of the present dispensation: 

" For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and 
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION &5 

into the ark. And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away: 
so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Watch therefore; for 
ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. * * * 

In the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, 
they planted, they builded : But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it 
rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus 
shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. * * 

In that day, he that shall be upon the house-top, and his stuff in the 
house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is hi the field 
let him likewise not return back. * * * * 

And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be over- 
charged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that 
day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that 
dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, 
that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come 
to pass, and to stand before the Son of man. Heaven and earth shall pass 
away." 

Grouping these prophecies, there is no evading the fact, 
or the charge, that the Bible is fully committed to the 
teaching that a day is coming when not a vestige of the 
physical universe, as now constituted, is to remain; that 
sun, moon, stars, the heavens and earth shall be seen no 
more, forever. 

Shakespeare, taking his thought from the Bible, thus 
echoes these revelations in his Tempest : 

" The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; 
And, like this insubstantial pageant, faded, 
Leave not a rack behind." 

The predictions amrm that when the catastrophe comes, 
it will be with the suddeness of a flash of light; the precise 
time of which no one knows. 

And if any man should say, I know the end will be next 
year, or next week, or next Saturday, and if he really does 
know it, it certainly will not come then, for the Master says: 
" Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels 
of heaven." 

But that; the end is coming some time, and without 
announcement, and suddenly, there can be no question in 



86 



BIBLE INSPIRATION 



the minds of those who believe that the Bible writers were 
supernaturally inspired with prophetic knowledge. 

At this point the orthodox believer is confronted by the 
critic who says, — Really you do not believe that these 
old Bible writers foreknew anything of these matters 
predicted ? 

The critic in turn may be asked if he can give a single 
reason for saying that there is not to be an end, or that 
it will not come in the way predicted ? 

His reply is that there is no evidence of it. But one 
may ask, Is there any evidence against it ? His rejoinder 
is, that these revelations are contrary to the nature of 
things, and then he begins a dissertation that has been re- 
peated perhaps a thousand times since the days of Hobbes 
and Voltaire: The Bible writers lived in an unscientific 
age, had no means of knowing of these things, and, there- 
fore, should not have spoken of what they did not know. 

But one may ask, if the critic is sure that the Bible 
writers had no means of knowing concerning things of 
which they wrote; for that is the very point at issue. And 
if they knew nothing of these things, why did they speak 
about them at all ? And is the critic dead sure that the 
Bible writers were merelv guessing and that the guessing 
is all wrong ? 

Before there is a surrender by the orthodox believer, 
some rational tests would better be applied to the assump- 
tions of the critic. And what could be more to the point 
than the testimony of noted scientists ? 

Professor Lvell was fairly well qualified to speak on 
these subjects. The following statements are from his pen: 

" When we consider the combustible nature of the elements of the earth 
the facility with which their compounds may be decomposed, and the quan- 
tity of heat which they evolve during the process; when we recollect the 
expansive power of steam, and that water itself is composed of two gases, 
which by their union produce intense heat; when we call to mind the number 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION 87 

of explosive and deteriorating compounds which have been already dis- 
covered, — we may be allowed to share the astonishment of Pliny, that a 
single day should pass without a general conflagration." 

After long-continued study on these questions the two 
authors of the book entitled, the Unseen Universe, make 
this announcement: " Heat is par excellence the dread 
communist of our universe and it will no doubt ultimately 
bring the entire system to an end." 

The late professor John Fisk, speaking before the 
American Geographical Society, reached essentially the 
same conclusion: 

" It has been proved that every planet is slowly losing a part of its 
molar motion of rotation. The earth is also losing molecular motion by 
radiation. If along with the dissipation of the molar and molecular motions, 
the planets are also losing angular velocity, this loss of motion will ultimately 
result in their integration with the sun. 

There is also another fact to be considered. The inter-planetary spaces 
are filled with matter, and consequently all planetary bodies rushing through 
them must meet with resistance and lose momentum, which proves that the 
immense momentum will be eaten up by the resistant force. This loss of 
tangential momentum must bring all the planets into the sun; and at last 
our planet must strike the sun with tremendous force. The heat generated 
by the earth and the sun in such a collision would produce a temperature 
of nearly 5,000,000 degrees, centigrade. Of course, disintegration would 
immediately follow, and the next stage is the dissipation of the whole into a 
nebulous gas in a state of intense combustion." 

The late Professor Tyndall also discovered indications 

that the earth' some day may disappear in smoke and flame. 

His statement is the following: 

The shock that would be created were the motion of the earth to cease 
would be sufficient not only to set the whole earth on fire and melt it, but 
also to convert it into a mass of vapor. The heat would be equal to that 
derived from the combustion of fourteen globes of coal, each equal to the 
earth in magnitude. And if after the stoppage of its motion the earth should 
fall into the sun, as it assuredly would, the amount of heat generated by the 
blow of contact with the sun would be equal to that developed by the com- 
bustion of five thousand six hundred worlds of solid carbon of the size of ours . " 

Professor Charles A. Doremus,the distinguished chemist, 
while giving his opinion of the end of the world, employs 
this language: 



88 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

" The story of Herculaneum and Pompeii is familiar to us all. And 
what shall we say of JEtna, Vesuvius and of the other great volcanoes of the 
world ? These volcanoes are but a pocket edition of the world we are living 
in." 

Sir William Thompson is an authority not to be over- 
looked in this enumeration. His prediction is this: 

" The day of doom, though often postponed, must come at last. Sys- 
tem after system will concentrate, collision after collision will occur, nebula 
after nebula will come into being, and since with each collision two systems 
are merged in one, finally the entire universe will exist as a single enormous 
nebula, but a nebula far feebler in proportions, energy, and capacity, than 
in the beginning. The history of this final nebula will be like that of our 
solar nebula, so that, in the end, the visible universe will be a huge ball, 
dead and frozen, solid and black." 

If the Professor had made the full statement it would 
have been this: — With each of these successive collisions 
there will be a solar system wrapped in flames. 

The statements of two American University professors 
are these: — " The earth, if left to physical agencies, will 
at length collapse into an exhausting sun." 

" The total obliteration of the solar system is to be the 
final result." 

And it is to be presumed that no one in this audience 
who has given attention to these problems will question 
the fact that star conflagrations are not very uncommon 
occurences in the physical universe. 

Those who were looking in the direction of the constel- 
lation of the Northern Crown in May 1866, would have 
seen a star suddenly burst forth with extraordinary bril- 
liancy. Twelve days after this it diminished from the 
second to the eighth magnitude and then disappeared. 

There is no question in the minds of scientific men that 
this outburst of light was a star suddenly wrapped in the 
flames of a burning atmosphere. 

In 1878 a star of the third magnitude appeared in the 
constellation of the Swan where no star had been. It was 
subjected to a searching observation with telescope and 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION 89 

spectroscope and was found to be in a state of glowing vapor. 
Later, it disappeared from its place in the sky. 

Star conflagrations impossible in the nature of things! 
Who says that ? 

Serpentarions in 1604 a.d., the bright star in Scorpio 
900 a.d.; another in Aquella, 388 a.d., and the still more 
celebrated and classic lost Plaiad have disappeared, some 
of them amid flames of such intensity and magnitude as 
defy human comprehension. The estimate is that in some 
of these star conflagrations, the sudden increase of heat, 
could not have been less than a thousand fold above that 
which was the normal temperature. 

Now if we may reason from analogy the sane conclu- 
sion would be this, — that just such a sudden conflagra- 
tion is in store for our solar system 

Hence, if nothing different should befall our sun than 
what already has taken place in case of these various stars, 
that blazed up, or exploded, and then disappeared, there 
would come to pass the saying written : — " The elements 
shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works 
that are therein shall be burned up." 

Professor Proctor, the eminent English astronomer, 
speaking of star conflagrations employs these words: 

" Our sun being a variable star may itself suddenly blaze up, and go out 
as other suns are known to have done. In this case, the intense heat of the 
colossal conflagration would destroy everything on the earth, and perhaps 
even vaporize the earth itself." 

The scientific probabilities, therefore, are, that when the 
last chapter of earth's history is reached, it will be fire, 
coming with entire unexpectedness, like a thief in the night 
that will complete the record. 

But while thus contemplating the sky, have we lost sight 
and thought of another scientific threatening right under the 
feet of mortals ? 



90 BIBLE^INSPIRATION 

A conclusion long since reached of which there has been 
a forcible reminder the past week, is that the interior of our 
earth is liquid fire, the estimate being that there are not over 
two hundred miles of outside crust. 

If, therefore, this estimate is correct, there are in the 
bosom of the earth reckoning from side to side, seven 
thousand six hundred miles of liquid or molten fire. Need 
it be, therefore, a matter of surprise that changes of equil- 
ibrium, and that natural cooling and contracting processes 
are followed by earthquakes and volcanoes ? A pitcher of 
water poured on to this fire-liquid, if confined long enough, 
and securely enough, would wreck the whole American 
continent in one second. 

It is a wonder, therefore, that there are not ten earth- 
quakes where therejs one; for this old gray earth, is loaded 
with dynamite; it is a smoking bomb-shell, in condition for 
explosion any moment. 

As a matter of fact the Creator, for some reason, has 
made this world and flanked it with fire. Fire above in 
every star that twinkles, whose twinklings are the flashing of 
flames; fire below in the bosom of the earth; fire behind 
from which the earth has come; and fire in front to which 
the earth is hastening. Fire everywhere! 

Flee from a wrath to come, is the orthodox entreaty. 
Jump, for you are on the brink of a hell, is the stern com- 
mand that science is repeating. 

A French scientist paints the picture and condition thus: 

" We gcTon and on careless of the future, without ever asking ourselves 
if, by chance" this frail bark that bears us over the ocean of the Infinite is 
not in constant danger of upsetting; but really the end is coming. Human- 
ity will have to say, Adieu, earth! The last day has come. Pouff! A 
little bluish flame rises tremblingly; then two, then three, then one million. 
The entire globe burns an instant, is extinguished. All is ended. The 
earth is cremated. Each human being stumbles and falls dead, amid smoke 
and darkness. The last man throws a last glance over the earth. He 
says adieu injhe name of all, and from his poor burnt eyes falls a tear, the 
last tear of humanity. ~=He gathers it in his hand; he drinks it and dies 
looking up at the heavens, amid flashing flames and horror." 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION 9 1 

This Frenchman has given his imagination consider- 
able play, but the scientific basis for what he says is indis- 
putably established. 

Now, from all these scientists and from this Frenchman 
we go back two thousand years and listen to a fisherman 
who lived, as the critic says, in an unscientific age and had 
no means of knowing facts that only lately have been fully 
established. 

The following is his account of what is to be the end of 

things: 

" For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the 
heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 
Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water perished: 
but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept 
in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of 
ungodly men. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in 
the which heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall 
melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall 
be burnt up. Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what 
manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, 
looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the 
heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with 
fervent heat? Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new 
heavens and a new earth, wherein dweheth righteousness. Wherefore, 
beloved, seeing that ye look for such things be diligent that ye may be found 
of him in peace, without spot and blameless." 

A more forceful and splendid type of hortatory sermon, 
built on solid scientific facts, was never spoken. And will 
the critic say that men should not heed it ? 

But, you fisherman of Galillee, with the spray of the 
lake still on your face, with hands still cramped from grasp- 
ing the meshes of a fish net — you fisherman who knew 
nothing of conflagrations among the stars, or of fires 
under the crust of the earth, Who taught you to utter words 
that the most learned scientists and university professors, 
in this twentieth century are now speaking ? 

But without pausing for answer, or explanation, con- 
sider for a moment other prophetic announcements as to 



92 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

" that great and notable day," with its " wonders in the 
heavens above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and 
fire, and vapor of smoke," and falling stars, quaking earth, 
the sun becoming black as sackcloth and the moon red as 
blood, sending the utmost confusion and consternation into 
the hearts of men. 

And does the critic say that these Bible representations 
are overwrought ? Overwrought! 

Our thoughts turn again to the south of Italy where in 
miniature has been witnessed the end of the world with 
its crashing timbers and terror. 

The report from the observatory at Messina was this: 

" The first and the devastating shock lasted for twenty-three seconds 
only. It was accompanied by remarkable atmospheric phenomena. The 
surcharged air was filled with sparks and flashes of flame, which flared up 
until the heavens seemed afire. The crest of the earth appeared suddenly 
to drop. These phenomena were followed by distinct lateral oscillations 
that threw the panic-stricken people off their feet as they rushed to the 
streets." 

And then amid explosions that tore open the earth; 
amid clouds of dust, and sulphur-vapors, steam and gases 
that filled and poisoned the air; amid torrents of rain, the 
rush and roar of an up-lifted sea, that overtook and drowned 
the fleeing people; amid the reeling of the earth, the falling 
of hill tops and toppling down of cities — in this kingdom 
of death and ruin, there was agony indescribable stamped 
on the faces of the living and the dead; the air was filled 
with lamentations and supplications; the people took refuge 
in grottos and caves ; men were crazed, rushing here 
and there, muttering incoherent sentences; others, stricken 
with idiocy, were howling madly, then ending their agony 
by suicide. Such were the scenes reported in Messina, 
Reggio and other towns, now wrapped in robes of sack- 
cloth and ashes. 

But Italy is only a small kingdom, and Sicily only a 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION 93 

small province, and the scenes and devastation just de- 
scribed, covered an area of only a few miles. 

What then shall be said of the day of the crash of all 
things; the day of an unparalleled upheaval of waters, of 
thunderbolts that smite one another till exhausted, and of 
planetary and stellar funerals by the billion! 

To the prophet Isaiah, the future doom was so vivid 
that it appeared like the commingling of scenes, future 
and present: 

" Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the 
earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the 
fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit 
shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the 
foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken down, the 
earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall 
reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and 
the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it: and it shall fall, and not 
rise again." 

And our Lord, at least so the New Testament writer 
Luke reports, was not silent as to this day of havoc: 

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; 
and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the 
waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after 
those things which are coming on the earth : for the powers of heaven shall 
be shaken." 

In the prophetic vision of John, the fisherman-evangelist, 
the future became so vivid that the writer placed himself in 
the future and looked back upon scenes yet to be, as if 
already past: 

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her 
untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven de- 
parted as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and 
island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the 
great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, 
and every bond-man, and every free-man, hid themselves in the dens and 
in the rocks of the mountains: and said to the mountains, and rocks, Fall on 
us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the 
wrath of the lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall 
be ableito stand ? 



94 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

When, therefore, these revelations of the prophets, the 
apostles and of our Lord are closely paralleled by announce- 
ments from the world's masters in science, what has the 
critic to say ? His sneer, often his only weapon, is not to 
the point. In all reason and earnestness may not an appeal 
be made for him to give to the winds, or at least give a rest 
for a while to his several speculative sources of the Penta- 
teuch, his two, or twenty imaginary Isaiahs, his attempted 
re-location of the Daniel epoch, his Hebrew pointings, in- 
verted commas, slanting Greek letters and other like trifles 
and grapple with these profounder and more important 
questions until they are better comprehended and explained 
by him than they yet have been ? 

But these Bible prophets also speak good tidings and 
do not leave the world in a fright, without hope. 

He to whom is committed the ordering of these and all 
last things has pledged his word, say the records, that there 
is preparing a home for those fitted for it. 

The apostle to whom remarkable revelations were 

made gives these assurances: 

" We that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in 
no wise precede them that are fallen asleep; the dead in Christ shall rise 
first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught 
up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; so shall we ever be with the 
Lord; wherefore comfort one another with these words." 

That men can be and have been comforted with these 
prophetic assurances amid experiences the most appalling, 
such as come amid cyclones, shipwrecks, volcanoes and 
earthquakes, there can be no question in the mind of one 
who has been a witness to any of these things. 

A friend who was in Charleston, South Carolina, during 
the f earthquake there, a few years since, gave this account of 
what he witnessed in the streets of that city on the morning 
of thej[quake: 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION 95 

" The earth seemed to be reeling and heaving like the sea. Many 
people felt that the last day had come. Men and women were terrified, 
groaning and trying to pray. 

But the most impressive sight to me was that of an aged man walking 
one of the streets, pausing every few moments and bringing his staff to the 
pavements with a sharp thud, meanwhile glancing upwards, with a smile 
on his face and speaking but one word, ' glory,' ' glory.' 

He verily thought that the Master was to delay his coming no longer, 
and was about to welcome his servant to the clouds and mansions." 



II. VISUAL INSPIRATION 

It is not stated in every instance by inspired writers 
whether their revelations came by dictation or vision. There 
are, however, instances in which there is no room for doubt. 

When the prophet Jeremiah says, " Then the word 
of the Lord came unto me saying," he clearly does not 
mean that the revelation was visual, but was by dictation. 
On the other hand, when Ezekiel says, " The heavens were 
opened and I saw visions of God," he does not mean 
revelation by dictation, but by vision. 

According to the Bible records visions came to inspired 
men during both day and night time; when they were 
asleep, also when fully awake. 

The vision of a smoking furnace, seen by Abraham, 
the ladder vision of Jacob; the vision granted to the servant 
of Elisha in Dothan, and the many visions seen by Daniel, 
Ezekiel and the other prophets are familiar to every reader 
of the Old Testament. 

In the New Testament there is an account of numerous 
visions, notably the one to Stephen when dying, to Peter 
on the housetop at Joppa, to Paul on the road to Damascus 
and to John on the isle of Patmos. 

Visual inspiration was both historic and prophetic. 
When historic it enabled the inspired person to see what 
had taken place in the past as well as what is to take place 
in the future. 



0,6 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

The different stages, or days of creation, recorded in 
the Book of Genesis were not guess work, as some of the 
ablest scientists concede, and they appear to have been 
revealed in a vision to some one, at some time, and no valid 
reason has yet been offered why that vision may not have 
come to the one who wrote the Book of Genesis as well 
as to any other. 

Visual inspiration, when prophetic, enabled the one 
inspired to see things that are to take place in both a near 
and remote future. This, however, should be noted, that 
for some reason there are only a few instances where the 
prophets were permitted to know the precise time when 
the prophetic vision would become a reality, or when any 
other form of prophecy would reach fulfillment. So it is 
with mankind; every man is to die, but when only a few 
have been permitted to know. 

Likely enough at this point the critic offers the objec- 
tion urged once before, that the Holy Spirit is on the far 
side of a gulf so wide that He and the human mind can 
have no such communication as visual inspiration implies, 
and that while the mind may have visions, they are never 
produced by supernatural agency. 

But is the critic so very sure that there is an impassable 
gulf between the human mind and the Holy Siprit such as 
he imagines ? Or is he sure that whatever is in the infinite 
mind, whether past, present or future may not also become 
as an "open vision" to holy men if God is minded to make 
the disclosure ? 

An entire volume could be written on the psychology 
and mechanical physiology of visions. The few following 
sentences will have to serve the present purpose: Every- 
thing that comes to the consciousness of man was previously 
wrapped up in the mind, or as the point is sometimes 
stated, nothing can be evolved from the mind that was not 



PREDICTIVE AND^VISUAL INSPIRATION gj 

previously involved in it. All possible lines, shapes and 
colors are part and parcel of the mind's native furniture. 
What is perceived by either of the five senses (though the 
five are reducible to one, that of touch) merely helps in 
awakening to consciousness what is dormant in the mind. 
The stone, tree, or rainbow do not go into the pupil of the 
eye, strike upon the retina and go to the brain through the 
optic nerve; nor does the brain leave its chamber of dark- 
ness to touch or examine the objects of sight. The process 
is far simpler; the rock/tree and rainbow reflect the light 
that falls upon them; these reflections reach the optic 
nerve, produce a tremor which is conveyed to the brain; 
and the Creator has so constructed the mechanism of the 
brain that certain vibrations will bring to the consciousness 
colors, shapes^or sizes tha£.are signified by those vibrations. 
It follows thar in the^mind of every sane man slumber the 
shape, size and beauty of rock, rainbow and the city that 
" lieth foursquare " with its streets of gold and gates of 
pearl described in the Apocalypse, all of which can be 
brought to the consciousness by a few jolts of the brain. 
And if the optic nerve or the brain cells even of a man stone 
blind be disturbed in certain ways, the stone, tree, rainbow 
and city of God would appear the same as to one who might 
have the best pair of eyes through which a man ever looked. 

Is the critic, therefore, in position to say that the Holy 
Spirit is less able to produce a slight disturbance on the 
retina, in the optic nerve, or among the brain cells than is 
the stone, tree or rainbow ? If so should not worship be 
transferred from God to the stone ? 

The visions that have come to the dying may be the 
breath of God, giving motion to nerve and brain, the mind 
thus getting a glimpse of the glory that is to be, robbing 
death of its sting and the grave of its victory. Such is 
prophetic vision and the scientific basis of visual inspiration. 



98 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

One can not prove that there are no possible ways except 
these just mentioned by which the Holy Spirit could have 
impressed upon the human consciousness things invisible, 
or that the mind must always be confined in the rayless 
cells of the skull, or that there can be no conscious activity 
of the mind separate from and independent of the body and 
brain, and certainly there are phenomena that seem to give 
a degree of outside freedom to the mind, but one may insist 
that the critic and scientist have no ground for denying that 
there may be awakened in the human mind any possible 
conception, past, present or future by the physiological and 
mental processes of which we have been speaking. And if 
here is a God who knows the past, present and future, 
then, by the methods mentioned, a vision of the past, 
present and future could have been awakened in the minds 
of those whom the Holy Spirit inspired. 

As already suggested prophetic vision was not limited 
to scenes transpiring in this world. With surprising daring 
unless God-inspired, the Bible writers, especially the authors 
of the New Testament, entered realms unexplored by 
science, of which the great thinkers and writers of the 
world, except when familiar with the words of the prophets 
and apostles, are dumb. 

The better to enforce this thought a comparison may be 
instituted between the teachings of the New Testament 
and what is found in the Odyssey of Homer. 

For the suggestion of this comparison a glad acknowledg- 
ment is made to one of the brainiest of the Methodist 
Bishops, the late Gilbert Haven. 

In this audience no one need be told that the Odyssey 
and the New Testament are in the same language, or that 
in force and sweetness of expression and in clearness of 
vision, every other ancient uninspired writer of poetry, 
or prose, whether Hindoo, Persian, Arabian Egyptian, 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION 99 

Grecian or Roman falls below the author of the Odyssey, 
" the sovereign among the poets of Greece." 

It would be, therefore, what one would expect that the 
Homeric vision of the invisible world would be as clear 
and rational as that of any other writer of the Greek tongue. 

The greatest of Homer's heroes was Achilles. He with 
one other, Teresias, was admitted into the superior abodes. 
Achilles is represented as a great ruler among the dead. 
Ulysses visited and congratulated him on his high position. 
Achilles, replying, uttered this complaint: 

" Noble Ulysses, speak not thus of Death, 
As if thou couldst console me. I would be 
A laborer on earth, and serve for hire 
Some man of mean estate who makes scant cheer, 
Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down 
To death." 

That is, to be the slave of a mean man on earth whose 
service is void of cheer, is better than to be a princely ruler 
among the dead, was the best glimpse of the world beyond, 
that came to the mind of the " divine Homer. ,, 

Ulysses had a high-born and gentle mother who died. 
He|jsought and found her in the other world, and tried to 
press her in his arms, but " the form passed through them 
like a shadow or a dream." 

He begged a more solid embrace. She then mournfully 
told this story of the dead: 

" 'Tis^the lot of "all our race 
When, they are dead! No more the sinews bend 
The bonesfand flesh, when once from the white bones 
The life departs. Then like a dream the soul 
Flies off, and flits about, from place to place." 

And that is the best that Homer had to offer, even in 
case of the most pious souls that have walked the earth, — 
flitting, flying ghosts in tears and darkness. 

The other Greek book as everyone knows, is the work of 
several authors, some native to the Greek tongue, but most 



100 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

of them foreign to it, and it was written about two-thirds 
of the time back from us to Homer, and yet in purity of 
conception and clearness of vision, there is nothing in the 
world's literature that approaches it. Its predictive visions 
are radiant as the throne of God and comforting as 
angels of light: 

" Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in 
me. In my Father's house are many mansions, (abiding places), if it were 
not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I 
go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself; 
that where I am, there ye may be also." 

No wailing ghost! No wandering shade! No dark- 
ness are there! A home in a Father's house and a city 
that breaks in splendor on the vision of the dying, and the 
dead, its light the Lamb, its temple, the Lord God, its 
people, kings and priests, are in the vision of God's Seers. 

The first martyr of the New Testament declared " with 
his dying lips that his dying eyes beheld," " Jesus standing 
at the right hand of God ;" and the vision was so real that 
Stephen asked him to receive his spirit. ' Then God's 
tender light smote the face of this first Christian martyr " 
and he fell asleep while waking in a world already in his 
inspired vision. 

But there are other New Testament revelations that 
are full of comfort and wonder: 

" We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle 
(bodily frame) were dissolved, we have a building from 
God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 

" We know! " No Greek writer before that date knew, 
orjever ventured to guess, at such visions. 

It was this same New Testament Greek writer who was 
enabled to say, " For me to die is gain! " 

In the New Testament, too, God is seen wiping away 
all/tears, and redeemed men are enthroned, and the smil 
of heaven is on every face. 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION IOI 

And the figurative representations of harpers harping 
with their harps, of songs on the lips of unnumbered mul- 
titudes, like the voice of many waters and as the voice of 
mighty thunderings, of seas of mingled glass and fire, that 
never break nor burn; of a river clear as crystal whose 
waters never rage nor drown; of trees that bloom and fruit 
every month — .these descriptions may not and can not 
tell us what the invisible world of God is, but they do tell 
us, as does no other book in the world, what, in superlative 
grandeur and inexpressible splendor it is to be. John had 
the vision and did the best that can be done in human speech 
to describe what he had seen. 

The critic is again confronted with a question not yet 
answered. Why did not that noble Greek, the writer of 
the Odyssey, the poet-theologian of the classic world 
speak one word of cheer for his fellow men when leaving 
this world for another ? 

' To die is gain," that is the echo heard in every part of 
the New Testament. But tears in the eyes of the dead, is 
classic Greek. Achilles' mother, his leader, his servant, 
his greatest soldier, and Hercules himself, are represented 
as wailing and weeping and wishing themselves back on 
earth. The sad complaint in the Odyssey is this: 

" For Death to come at length, 'tis due to all; 
Nor can the Gods themselves, when fate shall call 
Their most-loved man, extend his vital breath 
Beyond the fix'd bounds of abhorred Death." 

Why this contrast between the New Testament Greek 
book with its resplendent visions of the future, and the 
Homeric Greek book whose visions are doleful and repul- 
sive ? 

Why did not Homer pass from realms of darkness and 
sorrow into those of light and song ? Why did he not picture 
Jupiter wiping away in tenderness the tears of Ulysses' 



102 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

mother who was one of the saints of earth ? What was it 
that illuminated the vision of Stephen, Paul, and John, 
enabling them to see what the greatest poet of classical 
Greece could not see ? 

Is there any reply but this, — Homer spoke no word of 
cheer because he had none. When looking toward the 
other world he could not see his hand before his face. Nor 
was he alone in this darkness. 

The prayer of the whole devout Greek world was sum- 
med up in the words: — "En se phi ki odesson" — " Give me 
light, let me die." 

Plato always spoke hesitatingly of the life hereafter. 
The great Socrates having told his friends what he thought 
of life and death, died with this confession on his lips: 
" Such is my view since you wish to know it; but whether 
it is true or not the Gods only can say." 

The Roman world was no better off. 

" Give me consolation, great and strong," exclaimed 
Pliny, " of which I have never heard or read." " The 
philosophers of the Academy affirm nothing. They despair 
of arriving at any certain knowledge," was Cicero's com- 
plaint. And Virgil, Rome's most honored poet, found no 
way for the souls of his dead to enter the Elysian fields of 
which he wrote, and his crowds of ghosts are almost identical 
with those of the writer of the Greek Odyssey, though he 
had the advantage of living a thousand years later. 

But what of the more modern poets Dante and Milton; 
were they not seers ? Honor to whom honor is due, is fair 
criticism. Dante wrote thrilling words about heaven and 
hell, but was entirely dependent upon Bible revelation for 
the prophetic fury that exalts and kindles into flames his 
poetry. Milton's supremacy is due to Scripture imagery, 
of which he was a diligent student. 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION IO3 

The best as to the future that is found in Browning, 
Longfellow, Tennyson, Whittier and the others never 
would have been written had they not gleaned their thoughts 
from Bible writers. 

The belief of the primitive Christian church was that 
the visions of the New Testament Greek writers were super- 
natural. And the world today is waiting a better solution 
of the problem, if a better can be discovered. 

This address, the last in the course, will be concluded 
with a few words from men of eminence, who with a mul- 
titude of others have spoken and written confessing the 
supreme excellence of the inspired Scriptures. These men 
are quoted with the hope that some hearer who has closed 
his Bible may be induced on advice from these men who 
are not professional or special pleaders, to open it again, 
and secure the benefits its study is sure to afford. 

Sir William Jones was a fellow of the Royal Society, 
perfected himself in twelve languages and was Judge of 
the Supreme court in Bengal. Besides this, quoting from 
Lord Teignmouth,"he was a profound jurist and linguist, an 
elegant poet, whose name is one of the brightest ornaments 
of English literary history." 

When the opinion of such a man is. given, very poor 
judgment is clearly shown by the critic if he hastily sets it 
aside. These are the words of this linguist and jurist: 

" I have carefully and regularly perused the Holy Scriptures, and am 
of opinion that the volume, independently of its divine origin, contains more 
sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains, both 
of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected within the same compass 
from all other books that were ever composed in any age or in any idiom." 

Another man whose name is written high in the annals 
of our national history, who in strength of eloquence and 
comprehensive grasp of intellect remains quite without a 
peer, is Daniel Webster. He was a constant student of 



104 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

the Bible and was called the walking concordance of the 
United States Senate. 

In the following words Mr. Webster gave what he 
regarded as the source of his best thoughts and inspirations: 

" From the time that, at my mother's feet, or on my father's knee, I 
first learned to lisp verses from the sacred writings, they have been my daily 
study and vigilant contemplation. If there is any thing in my style or 
thoughts to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling 
into my mind an early love of the Scriptures. ... I have read the Bible 
through many times; I now make a practice of going through it once a year. 
It is a book of all others for lawyers as well as divines, and I pity the man 
who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and rule for conduct." 

Recently there has been published the following tribute 
to the Bible by Justice David G. Brewer|of the United 
States Supreme Court: 

" No book contains more truths, or is worthy of more confidence than 
the Bible; for none brings more comfort to the sorrowing, more strength 
to the weak, or more stimulus to the nobly ambitious; none makes life 
sweeter, or death easier, and less sad." 

Charles A. Dana, late editor of the New York Sun, a 
journalist, standing in the front rank of his profession, 
while speaking to the students of Union College on Journal- 
ism, made the following remarks as to the value of the 
Bible to those engaged in this field of literature: 

There are some books that are absolutely indispensable to the kind of 
education we are contemplating and to the profession we are considering 
and of all these the most indispensable, the most useful, the one whose 
knowledge is most effective, and from which the most valuable lessons can 
be learned, is the Bible. I am considering it now not as a religious book, 
but as a manual of utility, of professional preparation and professional use 
for a journalist. There is perhaps no book whose style is more suggestive 
and more instructive, from which you learn more directly that sublime 
simplicity which never exaggerates, which recounts the greatest event with 
solemnity, of course, but without sentimentality or affectation, none which 
you open with such confidence and lay down with such reverence." 

But it might seem a one-sided argument should this 
enumeration be closed without allowing someone^to speak 
who represents un-orthodox scholars and thinkers. 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION I05 

At the head of the extreme Unitarian and radical move- 
ment of his day stood Theodore Parker. These are his 
views of the enduring excellence of the sacred Scriptures: 

" Some thousand famous writers come up in this century to be forgotten 
in the next. But the silver cord of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden 
bowl broken, though time chronicles his tens of centuries passed by. . . . 

" You can trace the path of the Bible across the world from the day of 
Pentecost to this day. There is not a boy on all the hills of New England; 
not a girl born in the filthiest cellar which disgraces a capital in Europe, and 
cries to God against the barbarism of modern civilization; not a boy nor a 
girl all Christendom through, but their lot is made better by that great book." 

The distinguished philosopher Fichte wrote thus: 

" This ancient and venerable record contains the profoundest and 
loftiest wisdom, and presents those results to which all philosophy must at 
last return." 

Said the French skeptic Rousseau, " I must confess that 
the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with astonish- 
ment." 

And there are a thousand and more testimonies, similar 
to these, and from men no less eminent, that could be given 
did time permit. 

But perhaps there is need of no more; for here are 
words from representative men — one a linguist and other- 
wise accomplished, another a statesman, another a judge 
on the United States Supreme bench, another a noted 
journalist, another an opponent of the " popular theology," 
and two others, one a German, the other a Frenchman, 
both un-orthodox, and both eminently distinguished. 

While, therefore, one might hesitate to ask the people 
of this pious and impious, this conceited and humiliated, 
this believing and skeptical city of Boston to accept the 
testimony of those who speak from this platform, yet there 
can be no impropriety in asking the people here and else- 
where to heed the counsel of these men who speak, not 
professionally, yet with keen intelligence and profound 
conviction. 



106 BIBLE INSPIRATION 

And there is a world of thinking people who never 
have been nearer than now to this confession of faith: 
When the truths of the Bible shall become the rule of 
conduct among men and nations there will then be realized 
the most perfect physical development, the most rapid 
intellectual progress, the greatest political prosperity, the 
most perfect and universal reign of peace and the highest, 
moral and spiritual perfection that can be attained by the 
human race. 

We have now canvassed the ground intended in these 
addresses, but no one could feel more keenly than your 
speaker that his efforts have fallen immensely below what 
the theme demands. 

Still it is hoped that the outcome of these studies will 
awaken in some minds renewed interest in Bible study and 
investigation and that ultimately the honest inquirer will 
be persuaded that through the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit there has come into the world the most precious and 
wonderful book ever written — a book whose records 
contain the earliest history of mankind, now being confirmed 
by recent research and excavation; a book whose narratives, 
in pathos, simplicity and universal interest are unequalled, 
and in form of statement are free from every character- 
istic that attaches to legend and myth; a book whose char- 
acters, unlike those of other literature, are never overdrawn, 
nor underdrawn; whose book of Job and the Apocalypse 
are the most majestic poems in any literature; whose psalms 
go so deep into the religious experiences of men that they 
will remain to the end of time the fittest manual of devotion 
that ever has been composed; whose ethical teachings, by 
proverb and parable, are the purest ever spoken; whose 
principles of law arcso profound that the legal world is still 
a copyist; whose prophetic literature stands among all 



PREDICTIVE AND VISUAL INSPIRATION IO7 

other productions of human genius so absolutely alone that 
there are no other writings with which it can be classed; 
whose exhibition of divine love in Jesus Christ is the most 
constraining ever yet conceived by the human mind; and 
whose visions and representations of the invisible world are 
so attractive that they have robbed death and the grave of 
their sting, and so self-consistent and rational that the 
civilized world accepts them to the exclusion of every thing 
else that the pen of man has written concerning the future 
life; a book that has overlooked no condition of human 
life; whose words sometimes are a terror to the wicked but 
give strength to the weak, consolation to the sorrowful, hope 
to the discouraged, promises of reward to the good, and of 
pardon to the penitent and whose words spoken at the bed- 
side of the dying have been able to quell every misgiving 
and leave the brow calm and serene as heaven. 

For such a book let no Christian and no thoughtful 
man ever offer apology, or hesitate to be prophet enough to 
proclaim in street and on house-top, that, whatsoever shall 
yet be written, this WORD OF GOD BY INSPIRED 
MEN is to remain in the future as it has been in the 
past the most ennobling and inspiring book in all the 
world's literature. 



PROFESSOR L T. TOW NSEWS BOOKS. 

" Devoted to those inquiries which now agitate the thinking world." 

Radical. 
" The aim of these books, as is well known, has been to show the reasonableness of the 
Evangelical Christian doctrine. Persons sceptically inclined should, therefore, read 
them." 

Publisher'' s Announcement 

The following books can be ordered through Rev. Duncan MacPhie, 
Tremont . Temple, Bostor, Mass. Credo, Arena and Throne, God-man. 
Sword and Garment, Supernatural Factor in Revivals, Bible Theology and 
Modern Thought. The publisher's price for each of these books is $1 .50. 
Arrangements are now made by which they can be secured at .75 cents pos- 
tage prepaid. 

The price of the following books is reduced to that named below 
Story of Jonah and Higher Criticism, .20; Satan and Demons, .25; 
God's Goodness and Severity, .25; Adam and Eve; History or Myth, .25; 
Deluge; History or Myth, .35; 

Editions of the following books, occasionally called for, are exhausted : 
Lost Forever; Intermediate World; Fate of Republics; Faith Work. 
Christian Science and Other Cures; The Bible and other Ancient Literature; 
Art of Speech, Vol. I. Studies in Poetry and Prose; Vol. II. Studies in Elo- 
quence and Logic; Mosaic Record and Modern Science; Evolution and 
Creation. 



The following pamphlets and booklets may be ordered as above, at .10 
per copy. 

What Noted Men Think of Christ; What Noted Men Think of the 
Bible; Primitive Orthodoxy and Progressive Orthodoxy; Collapse of 
Evolution; New Tbelogies only Bubbles; Final Judgment; The Dis- 
reputable Woman and her Conversion; Temptation; Righteous without 
Knowing It; God and the Nation; Penalty of Unrighteousness, More 
Unrighteousness; Paul's Cloak, or Consecration; God and the Islands of 
the Sea; Manifest Destiny, Religious Point of View; Esther,or the 
Wise Venture; John the Baptist, or the Ministry Christ Approves; Clerical 
Politics; The School Conflict in Boston, 1888-1890. 



The following pamphlets are out of print: 

True and Pretended Christianity; Chinese Question ; Outlines of Chris- 
tian Theology; Elements of General and Christian Theology; Failure of all 
Attempts to Destroy or Remodel Bible Theology; Re-embodiment of the 
Dead; God is Where He Was. 

The following books and pamphlets will soon be in the hands of the 
publishers: Anastasis, or the Blessed Life; Humanity and the Stars; Origin 
and History of the Bible; Authenticity, Genuiness and Credibility of the 
Bible; John Calvin and Calvanism; The Jew in Prophecy, in History and 
in the Twentieth Century. 

THE 



Evangelical Alliance of Boston and Vicinity 

Organized 1874 Interdenominational 

*t Treasurer General Si 

i. MOSS W. H. H. BRYANT Rev. DUNCAN 

Office, 5J5 Tremont Temple, Boston 



Organized 1874 Interdenominational 

President Treasurer General Secretary 

Rbv. CHAS. H. MOSS W. H. H. BRYANT Rev. DUNCAN A. MacPHIE 



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